USTDA To Assess Mexican Watershed Damage

According to USTDA's scope of work on the project:

Border transportation bottlenecks are a key impediment to the efficient movement of goods across the U.S.-Mexico border. Overcrowding at key crossing points leads to time delays, which force suppliers and shippers to incur additional expenses. These inefficiencies force the overall cost of shipments up and consequently the comparative advantage of geographic proximity is lost.

This DM will outline the necessary steps to create a more competitive border, enhanced trade and investment opportunities, and the overall competitiveness of North America by outlining the key obstacles to an orderly, efficient and secure border transportation network and identifying the grantee most capable of implementing these reforms. Implementation of this Project would help the Mexican and U.S. government officials fulfill their commitment to creating a world-class border.

The current challenge is not merely to move goods across the border in a timely way, but also to ensure that the contents of each container have not been tampered with along the supply chain. As the head of the Mexican Communication and Transportation Secretariat (SCT) enumerated at a transportation conference sponsored by the U.S-Mexico Chamber of Commerce in September 2005, what matters are the security, quality and efficiency of transportation at a timely rate and low cost. A representative from Mexico’s State Department (SRE) also highlighted the importance of a secure competitive border. In fact, SRE’s commitment to Partnership for Prosperity (P4P) objectives is to reduce bottlenecks at the border by twenty five percent.

The commercial infrastructure challenges along the U.S.-Mexico border are great and diverse; therefore, the TA must be targeted. This TA would include an assessment of commercial efficiency, supply-chain security, the volume of international trade activity, commercial transportation stress points, customs procedures, and most importantly the specific challenges faced by the numerous government agencies on both sides of the border that are directly involved in commercial transportation and customs facilitation. The DM consultant should design a TA that evaluates, measures, and analyzes the stumbling blocks to creating a seamless border. Buyers, suppliers, customs agents, trucking industry, port authorities, and shippers should all be included in the parameters of the TA. It is in economic interest of the U.S. and Mexico to confront this problem now with world-class solutions.

From a security perspective, the DM consultant must take into consideration the numerous supply-chain security initiatives on either side of the border, and suggest ways for each link in the distribution chain to achieve compliance. The DM should also assess the private sector’s perspective on shipping schedules and customs clearance procedures and suggest ways to shift the paradigm away from total processing by customs officers at the border to a shared burden of compliance between the private and public sectors.