By DALCY LULUA
THE NATIONAL Trade Office (NTO) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the PNG Customs Service today (July 5) to share information and trade data.
Speaking during the ceremony, NTO Chief Trade Officer (CTO), Richard Yakam, highlighted that the occasion is significant for the NTO as they just established themselves after being kicked backed and forth between the Department of Foreign Affairs and Commerce Industry for awhile.
“For the National Trade Office, the data from PNG Customs particularly; export and import data, and the Tariffs are very important to us,” Yakam said.
“That data will help us in our policy decision making, policy advice to the government and in our trade negotiations and so forth,” he said.
“It’s very useful to us and we really like to thank the Chief Commissioner and your team to have this collaboration with us,” Mr Yakam added.
PNG Customs Service Chief Commissioner, David Towe, expressed saying: “This event is small but significant occasion because we facilitate trade at the borders and we capture a lot of data.”
“This MoU signing is to look at how best we can share information, mostly trade related data in Customs because we facilitate trade at the borders and we have a lot of data that we capture,” he said.
“That data is very relevant for National Trade Office,” Mr. Towe said.
“In terms of developing trade related policy, they (NTO) are a policy making agency and data is very critical for them and most of that trade data we capture are in our system,” he said.
Mr. Towe highlighted that the MoU between Customs and NTO will allow the two state agencies to share data that is very important for the trade office to use to develop policy to guide the development of the country.
Meanwhile, the Cheif Commissioner of Customs is calling on all agencies to work collaboratively with other state entities and agencies to achieve goals of different plans and strategies launched.
“For Customs to achieve the goals of those different plans and strategies that we launched, working in collaboration is very critical.
“We cannot achieve these outcomes without us collaborating,” he stressed.
“We continue to enter into different MoUs with different SOEs and state agencies so that we can work in collaboration to achieve our objectives, as well as our trade compliance revenue objectives that we have at the border.
“So, this MoU paved the way for us to further engage closely with the offices of the National Trade office,” Commissioner Towe added.
