Members from the IRU’s 74 member countries attending the IRU’s General Assembly today saluted the efforts of governments, customs authorities, the IRU and its Members to expand the geographic scope of the TIR System and to further secure its functioning through the implementation of the Real Time SafeTIR AND IRU TIR-EPD applications.

Geneva - The General Assembly of the International Road Transport Union (IRU) today gave its unanimous support to the initiatives of the IRU together with its concerned Members and their respective authorities to expand the geographic scope of the TIR System to China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, South America, the 22 countries of the League of Arab States (LAS) as well as the 23 African countries which are currently in the process of joining the newly created IRU Regional Committee for Africa and the African Union of Transport and Logistics (UATL).

The General Assembly also applauded the success achieved by the IRU, working in close cooperation with national customs authorities, in implementing the Real Time SafeTIR tools as well as the “free of charge” IRU TIR Electronic Pre‑Declaration application (IRU TIR-EPD) in all countries at the external border of the European Union.  The IRU TIR-EPD is also being implemented in many other countries keen to increase the efficiency and security provided by the TIR System.

The General Assembly was equally encouraged by the MoU signed with UNCTAD to integrate the most up-to-date IT-TIR RISK management tools in particular the IRU TIR-EPD AND Real Time SafeTIR into UNCTAD’s ASYCUDA WORLD customs application which will allow the efficiency and security benefits of the TIR System to be enjoyed by Customs and trade operators of even more countries.

Indeed, the Deputy Secretary General of UNCTAD, Mr Petko Draganov, addressing the IRU General Assembly, thanked the IRU for its precious cooperation and stressed that, “Trade and transport facilitation is increasingly important as a result of growing international trade, globalised production processes and the increase in intra-company trade…As a result, trade and transport facilitation must be a key component of any strategy aimed at driving economic development.”

He went on and said “The purpose of the ASYCUDA/IRU Project is to integrate the new functions for the TIR Carnet management into the ASYCUDA World system and to implement a data exchange process between the ASYCUDA systems worldwide and the IRU IT System for the management of the TIR Carnets…targeting a better secure and controlled environment for goods in TIR transit… Then goods may be released faster when presented to customs at the border or at the destination.”

The General Assembly unanimously reconfirmed the IRU’s commitment to accept the responsibility for the effective organisation and functioning of the TIR international guarantee system for the period 2011-2013, pursuant to the authorisation granted by the Administrative Committee to the TIR Convention (AC.2) to the IRU to centrally print and distribute TIR Carnets and to organise the effective functioning of the guarantee system for that period, as confirmed by the AC.2 on 4 February and 30 September 2010.

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Press contact: Juliette Ebélé, +41 22 918 27 07, press@iru.org