Belize Observes International Customs Day
Today, the Customs and Excise Department participated in the celebration of International Customs Day. It is meant to highlight the various roles of customs agencies around the world in ensuring border security and facilitating trade. This year’s festivities carried the theme, “Customs: Engaging Traditional and New Partners with Purpose. News Five’s Britney Gordon attended the demonstration for more information.
Britney Gordon, Reporting
Every year, on January twenty-sixth, the World Custom Organization and its one hundred and eighty members observe International Customs Day. The WCO, which assists customs organizations with improving efficiency and profitability, established the event in order to educate others on the roles of the customs sectors across the world. Comptroller, Estelle Leslie explained to us what the event is all about.
Estella Leslie
Estella Leslie, Comptroller, Customs and Excise Department
“As a member of that organization, every year we celebrate because we show our officers appreciation and the general public as well as our stakeholders. We showcase what we do and encourage them to be a part of the department, educate themselves in seeing what we do so that it makes our job easier going forward.”
The event was attended by various high school students who got to see firsthand how the operations of the department work through a series of demonstrations.
Estella Leslie
“Today we have open house, where each section showcase what the section is about. our guest speaker spoke that most people would just see customs at the international airport or at the border. Customs is much more bigger than that. Customs is responsible for the entire trade process. So from importation at the at the port, at the airport, people coming in, we have a cargo section at the airport. We also have border stations that we have to man. And besides that, we also have responsibilities, like our other guest speaker spoke about, the financial intelligence unit. We work along with other key stakeholders in ensuring that, we collect the revenue, and we also have border securities and protection of our citizens in protecting from bringing in any illicit or goods that are not that are expired or medication that is not proper for the society.”
Leslie further elaborated on what the theme means for the department moving forward.
Estella Leslie
“People only think about customs working at the border and the airport, but like I said, now customs role have evolved beyond that. So we have new partners, like I spoke about, the financial intelligent unit, the Belize tourism board, and with purpose in achieving what we all should achieve, which in the end will benefit the entire country economically, as well as protection for our society,”
Britney Gordon for News Five.
