ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Customs Member Nasir Masroor Ahmed and Quetta Customs Collector Saeed Jadoon will go to Iran next week in order to attend 7th meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) Council of Heads of Customs Administration (CHCA).
Both officials will represent Pakistan in the meeting, which will be held in Tehran from October 17 to 19. Officials said that ECO secretary general, International Road Transport Union (IRU) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will take part in the meeting.
The aim of the meeting was to focus on easing customs cooperation among ECO members, including electronic data interchange, implementation of Transportation Trust Fund Authority (TTFA) and etc.
ECO is an intergovernmental regional organization established in 1985 by Iran, Pakistan and Turkey for the purpose of promoting economic, technical and cultural cooperation among the member states.
In 1992, the organization was expanded to include seven new members, namely as Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Republic of Uzbekistan.
Over the past 12 years, the member states have been collaborating to accelerate the pace of regional development through their common endeavours. It is also decided that the ECO member states will continue efforts to promote regional intra-trade and implemented measures for improvement of regulatory frameworks and removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers in the region.
However, the regional intra-trade situation is far from satisfactory and one of the reasons is related to developments in the global markets. As exports growth in ECO region over the last 2-3 years was driven mostly by oil and non-oil commodity prices, growth was mostly attributed to non-ECO trade partners, including fast growing emerging market economies like China, India, and Russia.
