Facilitating Trade:
Improving Customs Risk Management Systems
In the OIC Member States
31
3 Global Trends and Best Practices
Against the background of growing attention given to trade facilitation in the past 15 years, more
CA give importance to risk management approaches. Changes in the IT sector also contribute to
the popularity of CRM approaches as process or parts of it can be supported effectively by IT
systems and ensure a faster and deeper analysis.
It is difficult to assess how many CA now use CRM approaches for control purposes as there is
not a single database reporting efforts globally19 ; CRM approaches vary, and comparison on a
single criterion has little value in terms of reflecting the depth and effectiveness of CRM20.
According to the 2017 Second Global Survey on Trade Facilitation and Paperless Trade
Implementation conducted by the United Nations Regional Commissions (UNRCs) covering 120
countries from 8 regions, 58 countries (48.33%) reported that they fully implemented; 51
(42.50%) reported partial implementation stage; 4 (3.33%) in planning stage and 7 (5.83%)
have not implemented CRM. 34 OIC MS was participating to the 2017 Second Global Survey on
Trade Facilitation and Paperless Trade Implementation; 13 (38.24%) reported that they have
fully implemented CRM; 15 (41.42%) reported partial implementation stage; 2 (5.88%) in the
planning stage and 7 OIC MS have not implemented CRM.
Based on the information provided by WCO MS 21, the 73 countries have operational AEO
programmes and 17 AEO programmes are in the implementation stage. 44 MRAs were
concluded and 42 MRAs are under negotiation.
In addition, CRM is continuously evolving in terms of information technology, cross-border
collaboration, and use of intelligence, cross-organizational integration, and depth of analysis.
This chapter presents these trends and three non-OIC Member case studies as practical
illustrations of these trends.
3.1 Emerging Global Trends in CRM Development
The most important emerging global trends in CRM development that will be explained in this
chapter are following:
 Current short and long-term risk trends requires changes in the way how the cross-
border management currently operates;
 Mutual Assistance Agreements between Countries is important global trend to assist
CAs to share information and intelligence on real-time basis and upon request ;
 Information exchange between CAs to support CRM particularlywith the information
related to high-risk shipments on pre-arrival and pre-departure basis;
 Larger focus on Intelligence as support of CRM and other CAs functions;
 Risk analysis stage - use transactional and behavioral risk analysis as scientifically
proven analytical techniques;
 The last trends in information technology related to CRM are to ensure appropriate
and smooth implementation of previously mentioned trends especially related to the
real-time exchange of information, communication between CAs, customs officers,
OGAs, etc.;
19 The WCO conducted a study on CRM in 2015
20
programmes/risk-management-and-intelligence/crim-survey/cbra_crim_report_final_mar2011.pdf?db=web
21
package/aeo-compendium-2017.pdf?la=en