From October 31-November 4, CLDP led a Workshop on Customs Valuation, Intellectual Property, and Post-Clearance Audit in Pristina, Kosovo, part of an ongoing series of customs workshops. The workshop brought together 24 Kosovo Customs officials and four experts from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). At CLDP’s previous workshop focusing on customs valuation and post-clearance audit in June 2016, participants worked with CBP experts to identify several priorities for future trainings. The most recent workshop specifically addressed those topics, which included protection of intellectual property rights and advanced post-clearance auditing techniques.

As part of CLDP’s ongoing effort to thoroughly train a cadre of Kosovo Customs officials, this workshop aimed to ensure that Kosovo Customs’ valuation, intellectual property regime, and post-clearance auditing processes are fair, harmonized, and transparent. During the workshop, CLDP learned that in the recently released 2017 World Bank Doing Business indicators, Kosovo improved its ranking to 51 (out of 190) on the “Trading Across Borders” indicator, up from 118 only three years ago. Kosovo Customs attributed much of this remarkable success to CLDP’s ongoing technical assistance and capacity building over the last three years.