On 25 November 2021 in presence of Regional manager of Latvian State Border Guard led project "Border Management in Central Asia - Phase 10 (BOMCA 10)" Maris Domins, the Customs Institute of the State Customs Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan was awarded with a professional standards recognition certificate of the World Customs Organization in accordance with Partnership in Customs Academic and Research Development (PICARD) Programme in the area of custom’s affairs.
The Customs Institute of Uzbekistan is one of the leading institutions in Central Asia supported by the BOMCA Programme and the certificate opens up new prospects for the Institute in cooperating between customs universities worldwide and training highly-qualified customs professionals.
The BOMCA Programme is proud to be a part of this achievement, as the Programme’s experts from Riga Technical University assisted with the analysis of existing study programs and made recommendations to improve the academic curricula in the key areas of relevance in order to align them with the WCO PICARD professional standards. Furthermore, the BOMCA Programme supported the application to WCO for undertaking the accreditation review procedures.
Border Management Programme in Central Asia is funded by the European Union and implemented by the Consortium of border management institutions in the EU Member States institutions and ICMPD, led by the State Border Guard of the Republic of Latvia. The project started on 1 April 2021 with a budget of 21.65 M EUR for 54 months period. BOMCA-10 aims at enhancing security, stability and sustainable growth in the region, while supporting cross-border cooperation and improve living conditions for people living in the border areas of Central Asia. Thematically, the project covers four components: institutional development of border management agencies, improvement of detection capacities, trade facilitation and improvement of cross-border cooperation. Geographically, the project covers five countries in the region (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan).
BOMCA is the flagship and the largest EU-funded Programme in the region. Since its launch in 2003, the its various phases have focused on capacity building and institutional development, developing trade corridors and facilitation of trade, improving border management systems and fighting drug trafficking across the Central Asia region. Each new phase of BOMCA, including the ongoing one, was designed to gradually build upon and increase the results achieved during the preceding phases.