26/01/2024

International Customs Day

By Ministry Of Infrusture

Today, the Saint Lucia Customs and Excise Department, along with 184 of our fellow members of the World Customs Organization (WCO), celebrate International Customs Day. The global theme for this year is, “Customs engaging traditional and new partnerships with purpose”. ICD is an occasion in which there is a worldwide focus on the important role of Customs officials, and customs administrations play in screening goods, and people as they move across borders throughout the world.

The Saint Lucia Customs and Excise Department will mark International Customs Day with a week of activities, beginning today, 22nd January, 2024, and will culminate with a Dinner on the 27th of January with a dinner to honor our recent retirees.

In celebrating International Customs Day, I must congratulate the many hard working men and women of our department as well as other customs administrations, who are being honored at this time.

In choosing this year’s theme, the WCO is encouraging its members to deepen existing partnerships while purposefully exploring, and exploiting, new ones.

Customs, as you know, performs a number of critical national functions, including revenue collection, border security, and the facilitation of trade and travel. Collaborations with local, regional and international partners, is a significant contributor to achieving this mandate.

As we aim to improve our border security, tightening the noose on the illicit trafficking in Small arms and light weapons, is certainly an area in which we working to forge new partnerships. We also purpose to leverage key partnerships to build greater capacity, which can potentially impact all our strategic focus areas.

Good partnerships, ensure we build capacity, effectively enforce appropriate border controls, accurately collect revenue and facilitate trading and travel across borders.  

A small fraction of our local partners include the:

• Ministry of Health
• Ministry of Commerce
• Plant Quarantine and Vet Livestock Division of the Ministry of Agriculture
• Marine Unit and the Drug Squad of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force
• Saint Lucia Bureau of Standards
• Saint Lucia Air and Sea Ports Authority (SLASPA)
• Ministry of Sustainable Development

For ICD 2024, Customs is also being encouraged to explore new ways of doing things, which can improve our efficiency as well as our effectiveness. This year’s theme is timely, as our department is in the process of leveraging technology with a view to achieving what we are hoping will be a ‘paperless customs environment’. This will undoubtedly be a cultural shift, often not an easy shift, but a necessary one; it will mean fewer hurdles for the trading community while reducing our operating costs and management of physical documents.

It is our hope that ICD will be the occasion to focus on successes, in partnership as well as the range of possibilities which remain untapped. It is our tireless hope, that we will be stronger in every aspect as we progress toward making the Saint Lucia Customs and Excise Department the best it can be.

Let me once again bid you a happy International Customs Day.