2023-06-17 21:52:17
Dakar, June 17 (APS) – Heads of customs administrations of nine ECOWAS member states have committed, through a memorandum of understanding signed in Lomé (Togo), to operationalize an Interconnected Goods Management System in transit (SIGMAT), we learned from the communication services of the regional organization.
The Directors General of Customs from Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo, meeting in the Togolese capital on June 8 and 9, are notably “resolutely committed” to the full operationalization of SIGMAT, reports the source.
She points out that this operationalization will put an end to the outdated manual management of goods transit operations along the trade corridors of the ECOWAS region, the Economic Community of West African States.
This program for the interconnection of customs computer systems is an initiative of the ECOWAS Commission, the objective of which is to streamline the movement of goods on the various road corridors in the regional area by eliminating multiple checkpoints and disruptions charge at the borders of the States, it is known.
The operationalization of SIGMAT will at the same time allow customs administrations to work together, so that information on cargoes of goods in transit, once declared at a departure office and the route specified, will be shared simultaneously. electronically to the customs offices of passage and to that of final destination of the goods, explain the initiators.
The Directors General of Customs of the States concerned have also made a number of recommendations to the ECOWAS Commission, which is called upon, among other things, to set up a mechanism for the regional unique identification of economic operators.
They also advocated the finalization of an SGMAT procedures manual, the acceleration of the implementation of the Regulation on the Community transit guarantee mechanism.
The ECOWAS Commission is invited to propose to the next meeting of the steering committee a mechanism for the management and sustainability of the activities involved in the implementation of SIGMAT in the Member States.
The meeting of the directors general was preceded by the meeting of experts from the customs administrations of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo, held from 05 to 07 June 2023 in Lomé.
Any other ECOWAS Member State may become a party to this Memorandum of Understanding by simply notifying the ECOWAS Commission, the participants at the Lomé meeting agreed.
Thus, on the sidelines of the meeting of experts, the ECOWAS Commission organized a meeting devoted to the development of a roadmap for the deployment of SIGMAT in the other ECOWAS Member States. A meeting attended by representatives of Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, we learned from the same source.
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