Overseas Commerce Ltd- Haifa has been formally accepted to the Authorized Economic Operator program of the Israel Customs Directorate.
In a letter issued by the Customs Directorate it noted that during the verification process, the company has been examined both by financial and regulatory parameters and by security parameters with respect to the trade facilitation and the security of the supply chain and has met the conditions of the program.
The Israel Customs Directorate declared the Haifa Cargo Terminal as a partner for the trade facilitation and security of the international supply chain. The AEO concept is one of the main building blocks within the World Customs Organization WCO SAFE Framework of Standards (SAFE).
The latter is part of the future international Customs model set out to support secure trade. SAFE sets out a range of standards to guide international Customs Administrations towards a harmonized approach based on Customs to Customs cooperation and Customs to Business partnership.
The essence of the AEO-concept can be found in the Customs-to-Business partnerships. Operators can be accredited by Customs as AEOs when they prove to have high quality internal processes that will prevent goods in international transport to be tampered with.
Once approved customs will trust the AEO and perform less or no inspections on goods imported or exported by or via the AEO. This benefits the transporter of the goods as goods are available more quickly, which means lower transport costs. Customs benefits as scarce inspection capacity can be targeted better at cargo of unknown and potentially unsafe operators.
