An international consensus has emerged that supply chain resilience and sustainability, in which customs plays a key role, are crucial during crises to mitigate any subsequent negative effects.
As we slowly start to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recovery is at the top of countries’ national agendas. From the outset, it has been considered vital that legitimate consignments of important goods in the context of this health crisis, such as COVID-19 vaccines and other related situationally critical medicines, be cleared at borders as quickly and safely as possible.
Against this backdrop, two approaches have contributed significantly to efficient cargo clearance by customs agencies around the world: coordinated border management and single-window systems. While coordinated border management is the concept by which border agencies join forces to combine, to the greatest extent possible, their requirements into a single streamlined approach, single-window is the most highly evolved form of this approach, essentially consisting of a “one-window, one-submission” facility to expedite border formalities.
Under the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative, the WCO and other international organizations have developed a Joint Indicative List of Critical COVID-19 Vaccine Inputs, indicating product classification references based on the 2017 version of the WCO Harmonized System (HS). Once these references have been incorporated into WCO members’ single-window systems, it becomes much easier to monitor the cross-border movement and release of COVID-19 vaccines and shipments of related medical supplies.
In response to the current global challenges faced, coordinated border management and single-window systems will be pivotal in facilitating the customs clearance not only of cargo containing COVID‑19-related goods, but also of cargo that will sustain the growth of international trade.