Dubai Customs Director General and CEO of Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation H.E. Ahmed Mahboob Musabih received a high-level German Customs delegation from the Hamburg Main Customs Office to discuss opportunities for further cooperation and exchange of expertise.
The visiting delegation was led by Michael Schrader, Head of Hamburg Main Customs Office, and comprised Manfred Lindloff, Deputy Head of Humbug Customs Office; Pascal Eimert, head of Container Inspection System; as well as Thomas Kaeding and Daniel Holst, Customs Management Support. A host of senior executives and directors of departments attended the meeting on the part of Dubai Customs.
In his opening remarks, Musabih welcomed the German delegation and stressed the importance of customs-to-customs cooperation in matters of capacity building, knowledge sharing, technology transfer, coordinated border management and regulatory enforcement.
“This meeting is a great opportunity to exchange know-how and expertise and look into new ways of doing our business and enhance our capabilities to better manage the flow of goods and people, especially that German Customs are experts in the field and have the technical knowledge we can benefit from,” he said. “Whilst we are a globally-recognized Customs administration, we are open to experiences of other countries and sharing of global best practices in Customs sector.”
Dubai Customs has a forward-looking vision to become a world leading Customs administration supporting legitimate trade and protecting society by striking the right balance between facilitation, compliance, and control, explained Musabih. “We seek to achieve that goal through leveraging on best technology solutions, process innovation and people development to enhance our customs capabilities in terms of efficient clearance and risk mitigation.
“Dubai Customs works closely with Dubai’s trading partners and constantly improves its services for traders and travelers to achieve the ambitious goals of the Dubai Economic Plan (D33) which serves as a roadmap for the city to double the size of its economy and position itself in the top three global cities over the next decade up to 2033,” he said.
Musabih noted that Dubai Customs processed 25.7 million transactions in 2022 and 7 million in the first quarter of 2023, with 97% of transactions auto-approved and cleared without any human intervention. Dubai’s flagship Port of Jebel Ali, the largest in the region, is equipped with enhanced container scanning facilities now featuring seven advanced x-ray scanners which are deployed to screen consignments and ensure they are safe and risk-free without unloading the cargo. Besides, 100% of passenger luggage are screened at Dubai’s airports thanks to cutting-edge baggage handling facilities and the use of the international Advance Passenger Information (API) system. All these capabilities, he said, have helped Dubai Customs towards increasing trade and passenger movement.
Michael Schrader thanked Dubai Customs for arranging this important and mutually beneficial meeting, noting that that “the Hamburg Main Customs Office is the biggest customs office in Germany in terms of the flow of goods and duty collection. We work in close cooperation with customs agencies in the neighbouring ports of the Netherlands and Belgium. To continue to effectively do our job of protection and collection, we always need fresh and innovative ideas. For that we travel around the world to look for new ways of doing better with less staff and resources. We are interested to learn from your best practices in this regard and how you operate towards your future perspective of increasing trade dealings for Dubai.”
Manfred Lindloff said the Federal Customs Service of Germany is comprised of 41 customs offices and 8 customs investigation offices spread throughout the German territories. The Hamburg Main Customs Office began a modernization journey in 2009, as is currently Customs handling around 9 million TEUs in the port of Hamburg.
The meeting included presentations about Dubai Customs services, systems and initiatives. The cross-border e-commerce platform initiative and its benefits for joined members were explained. The German logistics companies and e-commerce operators were invited to benefit from the services offered by the platform. The delegation also learned about the organizational structure of Dubai Customs and the tools of the Customs Training Center, which provides a full-fledged learning management system that is 100% paperless and offers 1,400 training courses annually, including on-demand classroom trainings, online sessions, VR, and simulations. The vision and strategic plan of Dubai Customs and its mapping to the Dubai plan and how Customs supports the competitiveness of Dubai's economy were explained. The role of Dubai Customs in protecting intellectual property rights was also discussed, as 171 German trademarks were registered during 2020-2023.
At the end of the meeting, the delegation visited the control room in the DC main office and was briefed on the best practices implemented there.