Facilitating Trade:
Improving Customs Risk Management Systems
In the OIC Member States
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In many OIC MS, the Customs Strategy, or the strategic planning, is imposed on the Customs. CAs
is not providing sufficient attention to strategic objectives or the development of an appropriate
longer-term vision for the administrations, mainly focusing on revenue and not on compliance.
The Action Plan is a process that CAs uses to define actions to ensure achievement of their
strategic goals. The plan needs to help CAs to monitor the status of the strategic objectives,
allocate proper resources and make decisions based on performance results. Many CAs
performances are measured exclusively by their success in achieving revenue targets.
Usually, action plans are developed in broader viewwithout necessary elements to monitor and
measure the implementation of actions and achievement of goals. Therefore, the action plan
cannot determine the objectives of the strategy. Consequently, the CA cannot develop the KPI’s
to measure its successes.
The CAs management needs to focus on obtaining results in its priorities - including the core
activities and new priorities. OIC MS CAs already acknowledged the need for the management
to focus more closely on results, and hence the decision to develop a conceptual framework for
the introduction of activity-based management. The weakest points of the management are the
performance monitoring and reporting and analysis services.
The strategic and organizational context is the environment in which the risk management
process is performed. The CAs shall determine the strategic and organizational context where
risk management shall be practiced, wherefore the strategic context shall be determined by
considering the question: “What is Customs expected to achieve,” while the organizational
context shall be determined by considering the question: “How can Customs accomplish its
goals?” The answer to the question is delimited in the long-term vision of the priorities and the
strategic objectives contained in the CAs Strategic Plans. Once the strategic context is defined,
the type of organizational structure must be defined to achieve the set goals and tasks. The roles
and responsibilities within the organizational structure should be defined, and open
communication shall be ensured amongst all the participants in the process.
In OIC MS little or no attention is paid to ongoing review and evaluation of the implementation
of the Customs Strategic objectives. Often, management information, operational statistics and
performance indicators are not available to measure progress concerning non-revenue related
strategic objectives. Many of the OIC MS do not have quantitative goals and performance
indicators to measure the effectiveness of the CRM.
4.3.1.1.2 CRM Strategy / Policy
CRM policy is an output of the CAs strategy, defining the way on how the strategic goals will be
accomplished includes specific objectives and specific results for each strategic goal. The CRM
policy makes sense only when it includes the monitoring and review stage. This stage is required
as a means that will check where the CRM is going in respect to the defined objectives; and will
identify corrective measures to ensure objectives are achieved, and risks that may prevent their
accomplishment are mitigated. In other words, by Monitoring and reviewing its activities, the
CRM will be able to verify the degree of achievement of the defined objectives .