E-commerce and AEO

E-commerce is here to stay and will keep growing day by day.

E-commerce bases its growth on its increasingly valued benefits, which are as follows:

Comfort, agility, security, ease of payment, no time restrictions, avoiding going to shops, avoid crowds and long lines. The e-commerce value proposition requires from all of us, that belong to the supply chain process, that we look at international trade from a different perspective which can be summarized as “Time Optimization”.

For international trade, e-commerce is a game changer. Being able to buy products in any internet site, from any origin and delivered at your door, demands that Customs and Users of such services rethink some procedures and controls.

The World Customs Organization is constantly working on issuing recommendations for e-commerce, which keeps growing and becoming more complex. There are different ways of doing e-commerce, but the most common are: B2B, Business to Business, trade between companies; B2C, Business to Customer, trade between companies and consumers; and C2C, business between consumers. Each business model is very different from one another. A very reliable e-commerce exist, companies are implementing very strict processes regarding merchandise description, reliable shipments, reliable sale prices, among other factors. The challenge is to ensure regulatory compliance in all cases, in a very dynamic as well as complex environment.

Given the increase in the volume of transactions and shipments generated by e-commerce, Customs has a great challenge in ensuring that each movement of goods complies with its due obligations, either commercial information, security, health and environmental protection, among others.

That is why the WCO has published the “Framework of Standards for Cross-Border E-commerce”, where norm 6 establishes the recommendation to “Expand the Concept of Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) to Cross-Border E-commerce”.

I believe that the role of an Authorized Economic Operator has much to contribute to international e-commerce in order to certify users that generate trust in terms of security and compliance within their trade operations. With the growth of e-commerce and the level of demand in response time, it is imperative to have a good risk analysis. And for that, the AEO figure is fundamental.

The Private Sector has indeed a lot to contribute in these voluntary compliance programs for Customs users.

We trust that the AEO figure is a priority for Customs in order to contribute to the growth of e-commerce operations without losing control of such operations.