The HSC meeting of 11-20 March 2015 was attended by around 125 delegates representing 59 contracting parties to the HS Convention. The meeting took 785 classification decisions (including 751 decisions relating to pharmaceutical products in connection with the implementation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade in Pharmaceutical Products), adopted nine sets of amendments to the explanatory notes and approved 16 new classification opinions. When approved by the WCO Council at the end of May 2015, these classification decisions will be published on the WCO website.
The HSC also adopted a draft Article 16 Council Recommendation relating to certain corrections to the HS 2017 amendments of the HS Nomenclature. In this draft Article 16 Council Recommendation, the HSC included certain amendments to Chapter 44 that were requested by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) but had been omitted from the HS 2017 amendments and encouraged contracting parties to apply these amendments from 01 January 2017. The HSC agreed to the correlation tables between the HS 2012 and HS 2017 versions and the correlation tables for the additional amendments to Chapter 44.
The HSC also examined a series of general questions, adopted an update of its Terms of Reference (TOR) and also agreed to the draft of Technical Guidelines on Advance Rulings for Tariff Classification, Valuation and Origin. The HSC also adopted 17 sets of amendments to the Explanatory Notes (EN) consequential to the HS 2017 amendments.
