Baghdad and Erbil sign final ASYCUDA customs deal and unified agricultural calendar

BAGHDAD — Baghdad and Erbil signed a final agreement Thursday on implementing the ASYCUDA customs automation system and a unified agricultural calendar, a new step in coordinating customs and agricultural trade procedures between the federal government and the Kurdistan Region.

The agreement followed a visit by a delegation from the Kurdistan Region’s higher technical committee to Baghdad for meetings with federal officials in the agricultural sector, focused on implementing ASYCUDA and following up on decisions from a joint meeting on April 28.

The Kurdistan Region Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources said the talks also addressed activating a unified agricultural calendar to regulate imports and exports of agricultural products. It said the agreement, signed at the request of the federal Council of Ministers, places both sides in the final stage of implementing the system.

Separately Thursday, Iraq’s General Customs Authority and the Kurdistan Region Customs Authority held a joint meeting in Baghdad on implementing ASYCUDA at customs centers across the region. The Finance Ministry said the meeting reviewed the technical and administrative aspects of the system currently operating at federal crossings, including digital transformation, simplified procedures and enhanced electronic monitoring, and discussed unifying customs procedures and data between the two sides.

Finance Minister Falih al-Sari called unifying customs systems between Baghdad and Erbil a strategic step in Iraq’s economic reform, saying it would increase non-oil revenues, strengthen oversight of goods movement, reduce customs evasion and standardize procedures in line with international standards. The meeting concluded with a joint memorandum of recommendations and implementation measures, to be submitted to the Ministerial Council for the Economy to complete the required legal and administrative procedures.