The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has made “smart customs” a strategic imperative to facilitate growth in regional trade, and stands ready to team up with regional partners to upgrade workflows through technology, government officials said on Wednesday.

Their remarks were made at the opening of the World Customs Organization’s Asia-Pacific regional conference, held in Wan Chai district.

The Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department is the incumbent vice-chair for the WCO’s Asia-Pacific region.

Focusing on smart customs, the conference has gathered over 200 leaders and experts from more than 30 customs administrations and private sector partners from across the region for its three-day agenda.

“We are all committed to a shared vision: Forging an open platform to strengthen partnerships, foster collaborations, and accelerate smart customs development across Asia-Pacific,” Hong Kong’s Commissioner of Customs and Excise Chan Tsz-tat — also the WCO’s vice-chairperson for the Asia-Pacific region — said in his welcome remarks.

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Chan reaffirmed that smart customs development — underpinned by advanced technology, data analytics, and automated, risk-based processes — has long been central to Hong Kong Customs’ efforts.

He said the customs have published a new smart customs blueprint to better align with local authorities’ smart city vision, and with the General Administration of Customs’ strategic goals of smart customs, smart borders, and smart connectivity.

Hong Kong Customs have also increasingly invested in artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data analytics to expand collaboration and explore new opportunities, he said.

ValidAP — a blockchain-based digital platform developed by Hong Kong Customs for real-time validation of cross-border electronic trade documents — has received strong regional backing, Chan said. Talks to deepen collaboration on this technology are already underway with several Asia-Pacific partners, he added.

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In a keynote speech, Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung said the event is a “valuable platform” to share insights at a pivotal time when the Asia-Pacific region has emerged as “the powerhouse of the global economy”, running nearly 40 percent of global merchant trade.

He said that as cross-border cargo, passenger and data movements within the region have all reached “an unprecedented level” of volume and complexity, traditional customs architecture — characterized by “paper documents”, “manual inspections”, “fragmentary data”, and “repeated border clearances” — can no longer accommodate requirements.

Meanwhile, emerging risks in digital trade demand “more precise, proactive and intelligent” border control, he added.

“Smart customs, on the one hand, facilitates trade by reducing costs and speeding up clearance for legitimate business. On the other hand, it strengthens border security by detecting risk more effectively.”

Tang said Hong Kong Customs is upgrading its information technology infrastructure with technologies like machine learning to replace random inspections with predicted control, generating a real-time risk score for each consignment using empirical data and records.

“But smart customs cannot exist in isolation,” he cautioned. “The regional interoperability is essential.”

Looking forward, Tang said he sees “challenges” ahead — standard fragmentation across administrations, a need to reinforce cybersecurity and data governance, and a requirement for deeper private sector involvement.

He called on parties to drive toward a harmonized digital standard, bridge the digital divide with a single-trade window linkage, and strengthen public-private cooperation — a move he deemed “crucial to welcome fresh perspectives” and “make administrations think out of the box”.

The conference features a number of panel discussions to foster exchanges between government officials and representatives from the innovation sector.

Contact the writer at wanqing@chinadailyhk.com