As part of the 1st UAE Customs Week, Dubai Customs organized a ceremony to honour 25 new companies who recently joined the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO). This pushes the total number of certified companies in the AEO to 40 companies.
The honouring ceremony took place at Etihad Museum and was attended by Mohammad Juma Buossaiba, Director-General of the UAE Federal Customs Authority, Ahmed Mahboob Musabih, Director of Dubai Customs, Abdullah Mohammed Al Khaja, Executive Director of Clients Management Division, Farid Hassan Al Marzouqi, Executive Director, Human Resources, Finance and Administration Division, Rashid Mohammed Saif Hamad, Director General of Fujairah Customs and a number of government officials and representatives of member companies.
The AEO program complies with requirements of the World Trade Organization of trade facilitation. Once a company becomes AEO certified, they can enjoy a significant number of benefits. These include a grace period for declaration amendments, elimination of post-filing submission of paper documents, extended period for re-exports, faster clearance, penalty mitigation, self-disclosure of errors without penalties, and many others.
The Authorized Economic Operator was officially launched in 2016 under the umbrella of the Federal Customs Authority. Since then it has witnessed great growth, including new members joining the program and mutual agreements signed with the members of this international program.
The UAE signed in July 2017 a mutual recognition with South Korea and in November a work plan was signed with Saudi Arabic. Dubai Customs won the Innovation Shield at the 6th UAE Ideas Conference & Award 2017.
“We have aspirations that the program will serve the national efforts in making Expo 2020 a big success. We expect the percentage of customs declarations to be carried out through the AEO program to reach 50% of the total number by 2020. Last year the percentage reached 23%,” said Ahmed Mahboob Musabih. “We are happy with what the program has achieved so far, and this reflects the significance of cooperation between customs departments and the private sector in protecting entry points and borders and facilitating trade”.
On his part, Mohammad Juma Buossaiba expressed his happiness for the joining of the new members. He pointed out that other customs departments like Abu Dhabi Customs Department is working to implement the AEO in 2018.
Buossaiba added:” This program complies with the standards of WCO or equivalent supply chain standards. It helped the UAE top the world in the Efficiency of Customs Procedures Index at the annual report of the Global Competitiveness of 2017. We look forward to signing mutual recognition agreements with China and India which are among the biggest UAE trade partners”.