Mission Statement of the General Commission of Customs

The Director General of the General Commission of Customs with the agreement of the Minister of Finance sets out the aims and objectives of the General Commission of Customs for the period September 2005 to September 2008 through the adoption and implementation of a customs reform and modernization plan.

Mission Statement

We, the Minister of Finance and Director General of Customs of Iraq;

NOTING the emerging trends and developments in the regional and global arena, in particular globalization and the increasing competitiveness of the world's economies;

MINDFUL of the challenges these trends would pose on Iraq, in particular Iraq’s Customs Administrations, so as to build, develop and sustain economic dynamism and competitiveness of the country;

RECOGNIZING the rapid changes taking place within Iraq, the need to promote economic development and integration into regional and global world markets;

FURTHER RECOGNIZING the dynamic changes that are required by customs to move towards integration into international and regional developments;

BELIEVING that customs must aim to provide excellence and quality service to the Iraqi community, that they must enhance the efficiency, integrity and sophistication of their administrations, and that customs must provide consistent, simple and transparent procedures and requirements;

COMMITTING to deepen and broaden Iraq Customs cooperation and partnership within the region, to promote customs cohesiveness and uniformity within the region;

RECOGNIZING the mission of Iraq Customs to improve the cross-border flow of goods, reduce the cost of trade transactions and to ensure a higher standard of health, safety, security and prosperity to all peoples of Iraq;

FURTHER RECOGNIZING the need to formulate a long term vision for customs which will chart the future role of Iraq Customs Administration and to set new heights for customs regional cooperation, so as to face, and cohesively deal, with the present and emerging challenges posed on customs;

NOW THEREFORE we have agreed on the following Vision for the years 2005 - 2008:

An Iraq Customs Administration that will strive for World Class Standards and Excellence in efficiency, professionalism and service, and uniformity through harmonized procedures, to promote trade and investment to ensure security at the borders and to protect the health and well being of the Iraq community.

AND FURTHER AGREED that to realize our Vision, we shall collectively develop administrative and technical areas on customs so as to strengthen our administration on a regional basis. In each of these areas, we shall initiate the following elements with their corresponding objectives:

Technical Elements:

Procedures for Goods in Transit and Temporary Admission: to simplify and harmonies these procedures and requirements;

Automation: to ensure maximum use of state-of-the-art information technology to assist in the efficient performance of all international trade and customs functions and activities.

Cargo and Passenger Processing: to promote facilitation, simplicity and uniformity for the processing of cargo. Targets will be formulated for the time release of goods, benchmarks and performance standards to be reviewed and met continuously. To develop activities which account for the assurance that only those procedures that contribute to effective implementation of customs control is utilized; to co-operate with all other border control agencies to ensure expeditious clearance of passengers and goods; to separate the process of goods release from process of revenue collection, accounting and statistical reporting to expedite customs clearance; to establish pre-arrival processing of transactions; to use advanced risk assessment, profiling and selectivity techniques to identify risk consignments for physical examination;

Tariff Classification: to promote transparency, consistency and uniformity/equivalence of treatment on tariff classification rulings;

Valuation: to promote transparency, consistency and uniformity on valuation methods and decisions;

Rules of Origin: to promote transparency and uniformity/equivalence of application of rules of origin;

Audit: to apply post-entry audits and development of Iraq guidelines for post-audit system based on best practices;

Enforcement: to apply risk management techniques and examine a small percentage of consignments;

Administrative Elements:

Training and Human Resource Development: to promote uniformity of treatment coordinated action, equivalent treatment and homogeneity. Also to promote excellence, resource, expertise, research on customs relevant to the needs of the Iraq;

Partnership with the Business Community: to establish a close relationship with the business community for the mutual benefit of customs control, revenue collection, trade and commercial activity.

Mutual Assistance: to enhance the effectiveness of customs compliance and control to reduce smuggling and other customs frauds, and to promote uniformity and harmonization;

International Customs Fora: to conform to international standards to promote consistency of customs treatment to traders. To ensure greater coherence and proactiveness of Iraq customs in relevant international fora;

Transparency Enhancement: to promote transparency, accountability, appeals and accessibility to information on customs procedures and requirements;

Strategic Planning and Management: to take enlightened approaches to management of customs by defining corporate objectives and strategic plans to strike the right balance between customs control and trade facilitation. To make better use of resources, strengthen management capabilities and devise appropriate systems, processes and structures. To ensure the highest level of integrity and professional standards within customs and the provision of quality service;

RESOLVED to ensure the realization of our Vision, we have agreed to set appropriate benchmarks, milestones and performance standards to monitor the programmes, and we will review the progress in implementing the activities for the Vision throughout the development and implementation stages ;

FURTHER RESOLVED to ensure that the role of customs is enhanced in the Iraq community, we call upon all relevant parties of society, in particular the trading community, shipping agents, customs brokers and forwarding agents to establish closer cooperative links with iraq Customs so as to facilitate the realization of our Vision;

NOW THEREFORE we have tasked our officers to develop appropriate activities and programmes to realize this Vision and report their progress to us regularly.