On Friday, the Egypt Minister of Finance, Mohamed Maait, affirmed the need provide all measures of support and assistance to Libya, and to strengthen ways of customs cooperation between the two countries.
He also referred to the need to localize international experiences in developing the customs system between Libyan and Egypt.
Mohamed Maait said that Egypt made great strides in implementing its ambitious project to develop and automate the customs system.
“We are ready to transfer our experience that was based on modernizing the legislative and administrative structure through the issuance of the new customs law to move from a paper-based work environment to a digital one,” the Egyptian Minister said.
“We have the application of a unified access system that connects all ports electronically, which helps in simplifying and mechanizing procedures, reducing the cost of the import and export process, facilitating the movement of international trade, and reducing the time of customs release,” he explained.
“The customs release time decreased significantly since the operation of the Advanced Cargo Information (ACI) system at seaports,” he added.
On the other hand, the Head of the Egyptian Customs Authority, El-Shahat Ghaturi, met with the Director General of the Libyan Customs Authority, Brigadier Suleiman Ali Salem. Ghaturi affirmed Egypt’s keenness to enhance ways of customs cooperation with the Libyan side, and to remove any obstacles that may face the movement of goods and individuals between the two countries.
The Egyptian official noted that it was agreed to strengthen the mechanism for exchanging information and cooperation on customs violations.
For his part, the Libyan official said that they agreed to adopt a mechanism to allow the entry of goods that made in Egypt through the land port of Salloum. Both sides will coordinate the training of Libyan customs officials in Egypt, he concluded.