On 24 July experts from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Secretariat, the SACU Member States and the World Customs Organization (WCO) Secretariat held a virtual meeting to discuss a wide range of issues related to the Harmonized System (HS) as SACU has started the migration of its Common External Tariff (CET) to the next version of the HS. The WCO works in partnership with the SACU and its Members on this project as part of the EU-WCO HS Africa Programme, funded by the European Union.
The meeting was attended by representatives of all the five (5) SACU Member States - Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa - who exchanged their views on how to make the existing model of implementation of HS amendments more efficient and inclusive, how to streamline the process of migration to the new versions of the CET for all Member States and how to ensure that the 2022 version of the HS is implemented in a timely manner.
In opening the meeting, the SACU Secretariat stated that it was seeking to create a permanent and properly institutionalised mechanism to coordinate HS-related matters among the SACU Members. It stressed the importance of tariff work within the overall Customs modernisation agenda of the SACU, encouraging Member States to actively contribute to it.
The meeting culminated in the provisional approval of the Union’s HS migration framework outlining a time-bound step-by-step process of adoption of HS amendments in the SACU CET. Moreover, in order to have a clear vision of the overall process of the HS 2022 implementation, a detailed action plan was agreed by all Member States. The SACU and the WCO will continue their cooperation to implement the action plan, with the support of the EU-WCO HS Africa Programme. The Programme will join forces with the SACU to work on the establishment of a Union’s HS working group, optimisation of the HS amendments implementation process, setting up of Advance Rulings systems and further strengthening the capacity of the SACU and its Members in the area of classification.
Story by: Riaan de Lange
