Mexico’s single-window experience

   Mexico is the first country in North America to achieve a single window. The system has processed nearly 40 million transactions covering 215 procedures for nine different agencies since commencing in October 2011, Alejandro Chacón, the administrator general of Mexican Customs, said March 7 at the U.S. Customs Trade Symposium in Washington.
   There was some initial reluctance on the part of other agencies to share a common IT pipe, but they eventually became partners through a combination of rewards and penalties, he said.
   The system has made cross-border shipping cheaper and allowed the government to conduct better risk analysis of shipments, which allows companies with a good compliance record to avoid many inspections while regulators focus on shipments from suspicious or unknown firms, Chacón said.