Background

International trade has been a driving force in global economic development; the large membership of the World Trade Organization is an expression of the will of the leading economies of the world that preserving free and fair trade is a global priority. The events of 9/11 and the subsequent concerns over security in the international supply chain have led to restrictions and requirements, often costly for business, impeding the international trade in goods. These and other impediments to efficient cross-border trade have only increased since the global economic crisis started in 2007. Protectionism by means of border red tape is on the upswing. While the WTO continues to promote laudable measures designed to improve trade facilitation, including those in the Doha Round negotiating text, and the World Customs Organization is moving forward on its Customs in the 21st Century initiatives, the level of private sector engagement, so necessary to assuring the success of these initiatives has declined, ev en in those parts of the world where a tradition of constructive public-private sector dialogue has long existed.

Latin America, in particular Brazil and some of its neighbors, has been one of the world’s success stories in terms of economic growth in the past 5 years, and its combination of abundant natural and agricultural resources with a youthful and growing middle class consumer sector makes it an attractive destination for business. International trade, both within the region and with other parts of the world, has potential for huge growth, as has been identified by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and other multilateral development agencies. Yet Latin America has a long tradition of costly border procedures, protectionist policies, customs wait times, and an embedded culture of mistrust between private sector business interests and the government agencies charged with responsibility for customs and border protection. Unlike all of the key trading countries in the rest of the world, not one of the countries on the South American mainland has yet acceded to the Revised Kyoto Convention on the Simplification and Harmonization of Customs Procedures, and efficient multi-country land transit regimes such as exist between countries in Greater Europe and North America simply do not yet exist. This combination of circumstances means that no other region of the world stands to gain as much economically from implementation of WTO and WCO trade facilitation recommendations and standards as does Latin America.

The 2012 Global Customs Forum, Leveraging Trade Facilitation for Latin America's Economic Growth, is intended to build on the tradition of customs forum conferences started in 2007 as a joint effort of the Trusted Trade Alliance and the World Customs Organization, in order to address the Latin American situation vis-à-vis global trends in trade facilitation, and foster constructive private-public sector dialogue and consensus building between the multilateral bodies involved in standard-setting and economic development, government representatives both from within the region and from its key trading partners, and, not least, stakeholders from the business community whose interests are most affected by impediments to free trade. Government commitment to creating a regulatory environment oriented toward international trade facilitation is undoubtedly necessary to make progress in Latin America, but it is business engagement which is essential to realize the region’s economic potential.