Concluye en Ginebra el primer taller de la OMC relativo a las notificaciones sobre valoración en aduana

Under WTO rules, members are required to notify developments in national laws and regulations on customs valuation and a checklist of issues regarding their legislation. They are also required to notify on the implementation of the Decision on Interest Charges and of the Decision on the Valuation of Carrier Media Bearing Software.

Opening the workshop, the Committee chair Omar Cisse,  explained that this capacity-building activity is intended to support members in fulfilling their outstanding notifications. «This workshop was organised in response to the need to improve the level of WTO members’ notifications regarding the Customs Valuation Agreement,» he said. «A total of 142 members out of 164 have notified their national customs legislation and 109 have provided responses to the checklist of issues. That is a two-thirds completion rate.  After this workshop, participants should be able to complete their outstanding notifications as quickly as possible,» he added.

Featuring experts from the WTO Market Access Division and the World Customs Organization, the workshop sought to enhance participants’ expertise on the principles and provisions of the Customs Valuation Agreement. Special attention was paid to the end-to-end preparation process for submitting customs valuation notifications.  Participants also benefitted from the experiences of Colombia, The Gambia and the United Kingdom in their recent notification process.

Latifa Bzioueche, Senior Customs Inspector from Tunisia who participated in the course, said: «I now have a very clear idea of how to prepare and submit notifications under the Customs Valuation Agreement. In Tunisia, we are already very much in line with the spirit of the WTO Customs Valuation Agreement and all our regulations are based on its requirements. I will now be able to hit the ground running and work with my managers and government to make the relevant notifications.»

Another course participant, Olivier Libii Libii, Principal Inspector of Customs from Cameroon, said: «From this workshop, we have gained the necessary skills to now prepare and present to our decision-makers what is expected of Cameroon in terms of our pending notifications. We will work on doing so as soon as possible to comply with our obligations as a WTO member.»

The participants also attended a meeting of the Committee on Customs Valuation on 23 May where members reviewed 28 notifications of customs valuation legislation, concluding the review of four of them.

At the meeting, the WTO Secretariat also implemented changes to improve the Committee’s functioning, including the use of eAgenda and the circulation of a draft manual describing the main aspects of the Committee’s work. Members also continued the sixth triennial review of the Pre-Shipment Inspection Agreement and considered a factual report from the WTO Secretariat. The review is expected to be concluded this year, the chair noted.

The notification portal is available here.

A handbook on the notification requirements under the Agreement can be accessed here.

More information on customs valuation can be found here.