DUSHANBE, April 4, 2014, Asia-Plus -- On April 2, Tajik Ambassador to Belgium Rustamjon Soliyev met in Brussels with Mr. Kunio Mikuriya, Secretary-General of the World Customs Organization (WCO).

According to the Tajik Embassy in Brussels, the sides reached an agreement on launching a program for short-term and long-term training and retraining of Tajik customs officers and providing logistics support to the Customs Service under the Government of Tajikistan.

The WCO secretary-general reportedly underlined Tajikistan’s role in addressing modern challenges and threats in the Central Asian region and combating drug trafficking, terrorism and extremism.

Mr. Mikuriya also pointed out the significance of geographical location of Tajikistan and its communication capacities for development of regional trade.

The WCO secretary-general welcomed Tajikistan’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and noted that the WTO was ready provide assistance to Tajikistan with implementation of programs of adaption to the WTO.

The World Customs Organization (WCO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.  The WCO is noted for its work in areas covering the development of international conventions, instruments, and tools on topics such as commodity classification, valuation, rules of origin, collection of customs revenue, supply chain security, international trade facilitation, customs enforcement activities, combating counterfeiting in support of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), integrity promotion, and delivering sustainable capacity building to assist with customs reforms and modernization.  The WCO maintains the international Harmonized System (HS) goods nomenclature, and administers the technical aspects of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreements on Customs Valuation and Rules of Origin.