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Ricardo Treviño Chapa

Guest Speaker

Professional affiliation

Deputy Secretary General, World Customs Organization

Full Biography

Ricardo Treviño Chapa holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education) in Mexico and a Master’s degree in Global Banking and International Finance from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

With a public sector career spanning 20 years, he first worked for Mexico’s Government at the Institute for Protection of Bank Savings, focusing on areas such as process improvement, financial support analysis and asset management.

He served as General Director for Revenue Collection in the State of Mexico Government, where revenue collection tripled during his term of office. He also served as General Director of the Social Security Institute of the State of Mexico, where he spearheaded a legal reform to strengthen the pension system.

In 2013 he joined the Federal Tax Administration Service as Administrator General of Evaluation and Internal Affairs, where he was responsible for developing actions to strengthen integrity and transparency in Customs procedures.

In 2015 he was appointed as General Administrator of Customs by the President of Mexico, with ratification by the Senate. During his tenure, Mr. Treviño Chapa promoted digitalization of Customs procedures as well as cooperation with other border agencies and with the Customs administrations of Mexico’s main trading partners. In addition, he ensured that the effectiveness of Mexico’s risk alert system was enhanced through the implementation of technology and data analysis, with a positive impact on revenue collection.

During this period of his career, he promoted international cooperation by Mexico through collaboration agreements, information-sharing mechanisms and joint inspection programmes. He was also the WCO Vice-Chair for the Americas and Caribbean region and, in this capacity, coordinated the first ever regional Strategic Plan to promote and implement WCO tools and instruments.

Since January 2018 Ricardo Treviño Chapa has held the post of Deputy Secretary General of the WCO after being elected by the WCO Council. During this time he has driven an important change in the Organization through implementation of the Strategic Plan 2019-2022 which, for the first time, took into consideration input from the WCO’s 183 Members and defined a reduced set of high-level strategic indicators (both qualitative and quantitative), tangible strategic objectives, priorities and deliverables.

In his role as Deputy Secretary General he follows up on the correct implementation of the WCO Strategic Plan, overseeing and coordinating efforts made by the Organization’s three Directorates: Compliance and Facilitation, Tariff and Trade Affairs, and Capacity Building.

Some of the main activities addressed in the WCO Strategic Plan are the promotion and updating of the Organization’s conventions, tools and instruments, including the Revised Kyoto Convention, Harmonized System, SAFE Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade, and Framework of Standards on Cross-Border E-Commerce. To ensure implementation of the Organization’s strategic goals, Mr. Treviño Chapa also follows up on the delivery of capacity building initiatives. Additionally, a new mechanism for Customs performance measurement and for monitoring the implementation of WCO tools is under development.

As part of the ongoing process to draft the new Strategic Plan 2022-2025, Ricardo Treviño Chapa has built on the current strategy and taken account of lessons learnt. He has conducted regional consultations to develop an Environmental Scan identifying current threats and opportunities facing Customs administrations and has pursued a consultative process to determine the Organization’s new strategy, once again taking into consideration Members’ contributions, the WCO’s core functions and main focus areas, and an ambitious project to modernize and reform the WCO in response to the current challenges posed by the digital economy. Likewise, actions have been taken to mitigate the effects of current and potential future disruptive events, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

With a strong commitment to transparency, to Member engagement in the decision-making process and to continually seeking out innovative processes, Ricardo Treviño Chapa has been working together with the WCO Secretariat team to implement actions during the current health crisis enabling the WCO to keep moving forward, while at the same time promoting the international flow of legal trade, essential goods and vaccines.