|
May and June are usually among the busy months in the IMT-GT annual meetings cycle as the six Working Groups under the IMT-GT cooperation framework will attempt to choose suitable dates so that common participants such as National Secretariats officials, Asian Development Bank and CIMT representatives could also attend the meetings.
One important meeting recently held in Pattaya, Thailand, was the CIQ Task Force Meeting – the Task Force being a directive of the 4th Leaders’ Summit in Hua Hin, Thailand in February 2009, with the objective of harmonizing rules and regulations at the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine exits/ entry points at the borders to ensure smoother flow of peoples, goods and vehicles across the IMT-GT borders.
At each border exit and entry point, certain countries may have certain rules and regulations for specific reasons and it will be extremely difficult to harmonise all rules and regulations between the member countries. The Task Force will therefore face a monumental task to come up with harmonised sets of rules and regulations. Furthermore, efforts towards these objectives are already going on at the WTO and ASEAN levels.
The Task Force, in their Meeting in April, membered by senior officers from relevant agencies in the IMT-GT countries, made a practical resolution by agreeing to focus on improving of best practices, and improving the efficiency of the operations of these exit and entry points. One good example arrived at the CIQ Task Force Meeting is Malaysia’s consideration of applying the Malaysian Automatic Clearance System (MACS) practiced at the Singapore-Malaysia Border (where about 280,000 clearances are made daily), to the Thailand-Malaysia Border.
The CIQ Task Force is one example of IMT-GT at work, and a testimony that the various meetings are indeed pertinent and necessary not just to keep going, but the make things going better and faster.
By Dr. Hassan Ibrahim
Dr. Ir. Hassan Ibrahim
Director
Centre for IMT-GT Subregion Cooperation (CIMT)
June 2011
Back to Director's Message
|
|
