News

On May 14 -16 a three-day bilateral workshop was held in Kuryk sea port in Aktau, Kazakhstan aimed to improve the practical skills of customs authorities of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in the area of prevention and detection of illegal trafficking of goods and means of transport. The event was organized in cooperation with United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and was facilitated by BOMCA experts from Customs Department under the Ministry of Finance of Lithiania.

KazNU became the first university in Central Asia region holding the WCO's certificate on accreditation of its educational program "Customs Affair." With BOMCA methodological, financial and organizational support, the educational program Bachelor of Customs Affairs was recognized under the WCO PICARD Professional Standards.

In order to raise awareness of civil servants and economic stakeholders, BOMCA program assisted the State Customs Service under the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic in reproduction of recently adopted normative legal acts in the field of customs, judicial and civil legislation of the Kyrgyz Republic. Also, these regulatory documents will be used for training, retraining and skills development of customs officers.

On April 23 – 24, a regional workshop on the development of joint border crossing points was held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, organized in cooperation with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) Program "Promoting Regional Trade in Central Asia".

Regional workshop on EU standards on identification, detention and return of irregular migrants was held in Tashkent on April 16-18, 2019 organized by BOMCA in cooperation with International Organization for Migration (IOM). The event was formatted as a mixture of a workshop and round-table discussions between the international experts on the one hand, and CA countries national experts working on the issue of identification, detention and return of irregular migrants, on the other hand.

On 09-11 April 2019 a workshop on online education for border guard and customs training institutions of Tajikistan was held in the Border Management Staff College of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The workshop was facilitated by BOMCA experts from State Border Guard and State Revenue Service of Latvia and gathered representatives of different training institutions of Tajikistan forming and retraining border guards and customs officers.

On March 27-29 Tashkent hosted a seminar on improving the efficiency of the customs control system. Representatives of the State Revenue Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan presented their experience in introducing a risk management system to practitioners of the State Customs Committee teaching staff of the Customs Institute of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Participants studied the experience of organizing effective risk management at all levels of customs service (checkpoint, regional and central levels), familiarized themselves with the legal basis for the application of the risk management system, information collection and processing tools. Using the example of Kazakhstan, experts introduced to participants the effective methods of assessing the risk, identifying indicators and ways to minimize risks.

This BOMCA initiative is aimed at supporting cooperation between the educational institutions of the border and customs departments of the countries of Central Asia.

On March 18-20 in Kazakhstan workshop on E-learning methodology in training institutions of border guarding and customs institutions took place. The workshop, which was conducted in the premises of Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Center for Combating the Illicit Drug Trafficking (CARICC) , was facilitated by BOMCA expert team and gathered representatives of different training institutions of Kazakhstan forming and retraining border guards and customs officers .