Customs structures in ASEAN: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam

The paper at hand is part of joint project between the EU Delegation Singapore and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Singapore. The project has been assigned to and is executed by Mr. George A. Comnenus (g.a.comnenus@intcen.eu). The purpose of this paper is to provide EU-ASEAN businesses deeper insight into customs-related authorities and procedures in five prominent countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The countries concerned are Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Besides the identification of the competences of customs-related authorities in the afore countries, the paper at hand delineates the procedures through which these authorities interact on customs-related matters. Furthermore, it provides a short analysis of customs-related issues which businesses face when they import from respectively export to these ASEAN countries. In addition to the afore, the electronic version of the document at hand provides an array of hyperlinks which redirect to essential background information and sources of information used in the research paper.