Seychelles becomes 160th Contracting Party to the WCO Harmonized System Convention |05 October 2020
Staff of the Seychelles Revenue Commission attending one of the Harmonised System presentations conducted by Terryl Lemiel from SRC’s classification, valuation & origin (CVO) unit
In a letter addressed to the Commissioner General of the Seychelles Revenue Commission, Taeil Kang, capacity building director of the World Customs Organisation (WCO), expressed his sincere congratulations to the Seychelles Revenue Commission (SRC) for the key role that it played in achieving Seychelles’ accession to the International Convention on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System.
Seychelles is now registered as the 160th contracting party to have successfully acceded to the Harmonized System (HS) Convention.
As per the WCO, the Harmonized System (HS) is itself one of the most successful instruments developed by the WCO as it addresses the fundamental needs of governments. This comprises firstly the ability to collectively categorise what is being traded on a daily basis. With the HS in place, it also facilitates both decisions on immediate actions to be taken for specific goods (e.g. duty collections, restrictions or controls) and the use of the collated information to underpin economic and trade related policies and planning.
Globally, governments and businesses alike use the HS identification and coding of merchandise to facilitate international trade and regulation. It is for this reason that the HS is therefore considered as a very important instrument not only for the WCO but also for all institutions; public or private, involved in world trade. Its benefits include:
(i) Facilitation of the collection, comparison and analysis of statistics relating to international trade through the harmonisation of goods description, classification and coding of goods in international trade;
(ii) Standardisation of trade documentation and the transmission of data.
(iii) As a contracting party Seychelles is also able to:
- vote and veto any propositions and changes on classification that may impact on the country,
- propose amendments,
- share views on classification, and discuss propositions tabled by other parties to the convention.
It is the Classification, Valuation & Origin Unit (CVO Unit) based at Customs House which is responsible on behalf of the Seychelles Revenue Commission to implement the HS Codes and provide clarification to the general public upon receipt of enquiries. With the HS convention now into full force, the same unit is also the focal point to:
(i) Ensure that its Customs tariff and statistical nomenclatures for both imports and exports are in strict conformity with the Harmonised System;
(ii) Make publicly available its import and export trade statistics in conformity with the six-digit codes of the Harmonized System, or on its own initiative, beyond that level and;
(iii) To implement the new HS version every five years.
Seychelles Commissioner of Customs, Paul Barrack, noted: “Following the official visit by a team of WCO experts in 2019, Seychelles was highly praised by the experts for the job well done in successfully implementing and using the Harmonised System.”
To note, the Seychelles Revenue Commission – Customs Division first started with implementation of the HS ‘2002 edition’ followed by migration to the ‘2007 edition’ in February 2013, then directly to the ‘2017 edition’ by April 2018.
As a contracting party it is highly expected that Seychelles will migrate to the next HS version of ‘2022 edition’ as from January 1, 2022. This will be a golden milestone that the Seychelles Revenue Commission together with its stakeholders and partner agencies is surely committed to tackle in time.
On the other hand, Terryl Lemiel from SRC’s Classification, Valuation & Origin Unit also noted that with Seychelles now a Party to the WCO Harmonised System Convention, SRC Customs Division will now be able to benefit from technical assistance to amend its laws during the five-year review period, and clarify any issues related to the classification process of new products.
Cillia Mangroo, the principal secretary in the department of Trade, stated that “The HS has been and will continue to be one of the main building blocks of trade facilitation as it provides a common goods classification system which is used by most governments and customs territories, and also allows us to better determine and implement our trade policies. Hence, Seychelles’ accession to the HS Convention indicates our commitment to continuously promote trade and development. Through the collective efforts by all stakeholders, these provisions will assist us in further developing our national policies.”
The Seychelles Revenue Commission will continue to bring more awareness about the harmonised system and encourage more customs officers and partner agencies to become well versed with the system.
Contributed by the Seychelles Revenue Commission