The Permanent Secretary (PS) of CCLEC, Mr Paul Hilaire, addressed the Council of Ministers of the Caribbean Postal Union Meeting held in the BVI from the 14-18 September 2015 under the theme “The future Post Union” Postal Harmonisation and Sustainability. The meeting was attended by a high level delegation of Ministers including the Prime-Minister of Sint. Maarten, Chief Minister of Anguilla among others and it was chaired by Dr. the Hon. D Orlando Smith, Premier of the British Virgin Islands.
The PS delivered an address on the ‘Readiness of Customs Toward e-commerce” and highlighted the importance of the Postal Service in the Supply Chain and the need for Post and Customs to work closely moreso with the advent of e-commerce which is expected to top over 300 trillion United States Dollars by the end of 2015. He said that unless these two critical players in the supply chain begin to share information and work closer together more consumers will gravitate toward other courier services that are more business driven.
He further stated that regional Customs administrations have been preparing themselves for e-commerce for some time now and today all Customs in the region have introduced automation of the processes and have employed modern Customs techniques such risk management and post clearance methods which are intelligence driven as opposed to the gate keeper concept of the past.
He updated the Ministers on the current challenges surrounding the technical interoperability with the Customs Automated System developed by the UPN and that of the Asycuda system deployed in most the regional Customs.
The meeting was also updated on the status of the CPU-CCLEC MOU.
