Facilitating Trade:
Improving Customs Risk Management Systems
In the OIC Member States
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2.2.2.5 Targeting
Targeting refers to applying the risk profiles to information about transactions to obtain the risk
rating. Risk ratings determine the treatment to be given, whereby high-risk shipments are
selected for specific forms of compliance action in the next step of the cycle –
covering/treatment. The risk profiles are used for the targeting of shipments for inspection and
the decision on the treatment of the risk.
This step is performed automatically by a risk selectivity module, commonly embedded in the
CDPS, or it can be subject to manual interaction based on officer’s intuition.
2.2.2.6 Covering/Treatment
At this stage of the CRM cycle, specific measures of control or combination of different measures
for each identified risk are implemented. These control measures are categorized into the
following widely accepted channels (with three main and two secondary categories):
 Green - indicating that the declaration poses low risk and can be further processed (i.e.,
automatically released) without manual intervention (i.e., the shipment can pass
uninspected);
 Yellow - indicating that the declaration poses small to medium risk and requires closer
examination (typically focused on the documents) to determine whether or not an
inspection of the shipment is necessary;
 Red - indicating that the declaration is high risk and that physical inspection is
obligatory;
 Blue - indicating that the trader is selected for post-clearance audit;
 Orange - indicating that the shipment/means of transport is selected for scanning
gamma ray or x- ray.
Also, customs officers receive detailed instructions on what to check and how to check.
2.2.2.7 Evaluation of outcomes/feedback
The last stage in the CRM cycle is the evaluation of the results to determine whether risk has
been addressed, targeted and treated properly. There are two objectives for the evaluation:
continuous improvement of the CRM as a whole; and measurement and assessment of the
effectiveness of the entire CRM. To ensure efficiency of the CRM, all the stages of the process
must constantly be monitored and assessed against their success.
The monitoring and evaluation shall enable the development of a flexible risk management
system taking into account the changes occurring with certain risks, i.e., the decreasing,
increasing or disappearance of already identified risks, as well as the occurrence of new ones.
2.2.3 Transactional and Behavioral Risk Management
Real-time or transactional risk analysis is a formof risk classification (or filtering) of Customs
Declarations - CD and supportive documents (the analysis objects) submitted by the trader. The
risk classification performed either solely on the basis of the information in the submitted
document; or by all available supplementary information about a trader, including the
information in the CD. What characterizes such an application is its real-time nature, where the
standard risk cycle is stopped pending the output of the risk analysis and the subsequent flow
is dependent on the output. The objective is essential to classify the transactions or events (e.g.,
the incoming declarations or items in the declaration) into some categories (dependent on the
type or the purpose of the calling system) each requiring a particular type of action. The most
straightforward example involves classification of the objects into two categories – those