The Chief of Customs Affairs, Vice President of World Customs Organisation (WCO) and Regional Representative (RR) of Middle East and North Africa and Near East (MENA-NE) region, Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa chaired the 41st regional meeting of the MENA-NE customs in the Arab League Headquarters in Cairo, in the presence of WCO's Secretary-General Kunio Mikuriya and customs general directors from region's member countries .
At the meeting, the President of Customs thanked the Arab League General Secretariat and Egypt's Customs Department for the good reception and hospitality, submitting utmost condolences to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Al Saud Family, the people of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Arab and Islamic nations on the late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
He stressed the need to work on developing customs work, its mechanisms to keep pace with latest developments through cooperation between all parties nationally, regionally and internationally in order to confront economic and environmental crises, etc. as such factors have direct impact on the work of customs affairs.
He cited the high-valued initiatives launched by the WCO aimed to find optimum practices and solutions for the benefit of WCO members to develop and advance their administrative performance.
WCO's Secretary-General Kunio Mikuriya delivered a speech in which he highlighted the meeting's agenda pertaining to measurement of performance, correlation between the WCO's strategic plan and the regional plan, performance of the WCO's regional structures and the upcoming elections in June 2015 which will be discussed in the meeting of all regions in order to take note of views and remarks to be submitted to the WCO's Council in June 2015.