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On May 28, 2015, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that CBP Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske and the Dominican Republic’s Director General (DG) for Customs, Juan Fernando Fernández, signed a Joint Work Plan (JWP) toward Mutual Recognition that allows stronger collaboration between CBP’s Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) and the Dominican Republic’s Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) program. The signing was held during the CBP International Conference in Crystal City, Virginia.
The JWP outlines the requirements that both parties need to accomplish in order to position both Customs Administrations to sign an MRA in the future – possibly as early as 2016. The goal of the mutual recognition arrangement is to link the two industry partnership programs, so that together they create a unified and sustainable security posture that can assist in securing and facilitating global cargo trade.
The arrangement provides tangible and intangible benefits to program members to include: fewer exams when shipping cargo, a faster validation process, common standards, efficiency for Customs and business, transparency between Customs administrations, business resumption, front-of-the-line processing, and marketability.
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