The World Trade Organization (WTO) on 12 May 2014 announced that the Committee on Customs Valuation had discussed a proposal by Uruguay to update a 30-year-old decision that has allowed members to value, for customs purposes, software and data on the basis of the cost of the carrier media (such as magnetic tapes, CDs and DVDs in which they are transported from one country to the other).
Uruguay proposed updating the 1984 Decision on the “Valuation of Carrier Media Bearing Software for Data Processing Equipment”, which allowed members, for customs purposes, to value software according to the cost of its carrier media (CD-ROM or magnetic tapes). Uruguay said that under the current decision, Customs may value software in a CD-ROM at U$5 while the same software imported using a USB key could be valued at U$1,000. It said the decision must be extended to USB keys or flash drives because of their growing popularity as carrier media for software.
Argentina and Mexico supported Uruguay’s proposal. The USA, Canada, the EU, Japan and the Philippines said they were open to the proposal and were reviewing the issue. The People’s Republic of China had no objection to the proposal but noted that the Decision excluded songs and movies from this kind of valuation. It also asked for statistics on the trade volumes involved.
The chair requested the WTO Secretariat to prepare a study on the trade volumes involved, as requested by China.
