"Pressing issues" focus of New Zealand, China Customs talks

The Customs officials of New Zealand and China will meet this week to discuss "pressing issues" regarding bilateral trade and travel, New Zealand Customs Minister Nicky Wagner said Wednesday.

Wagner said she would travel to Beijing to discuss a joint work program with Minister of China's General Administration of China Customs Yu Guangzhou.

The wide range of topics would include joint capacity building, trade facilitation and information exchange, data analytics, officer and training exchanges, as well as enforcement activities such as joint operations, targeting and threat assessments.

"New Zealand and China Customs enjoy a strong relationship and work collaboratively to ensure effective border management in both countries," Wagner said in a statement.

"This visit is an excellent opportunity to reinforce the strength and success of our bilateral relationship, but also to explore pressing issues, including the impact growing e-commerce trade and global passenger volumes are having on our borders," said Wagner.

"New Zealand was the first developed country to establish a free trade agreement with China, creating mutually beneficial concessions in trade and deepened the relationship between our countries," she said.

"China is also New Zealand's second largest visitor market, and has made a valued contribution to the strong growth in international visitor arrivals and expenditure over the last few years."

Wagner would also visit the Shanghai Customs College.

In April last year, the two Customs agencies agreed to launch a new joint electronic verification (JEV) system to streamline and accelerate Customs clearance procedures.

Under the new JEV sytem, exporters need to enter a unique certificate of origin reference number on their electronic export documents, which is then be matched to the electronic data shared between the two agencies. Endit