Migration of the Customs Management (Tariff and Classification of Goods) Regulations to HS 2022 |24 March 2021

Ms Mangroo (Photo: Jude Morel)

The cabinet of ministers, in its meeting of March 17, 2021, approved that Seychelles migrate from the Customs Management (Tariff and Classification of Goods) Regulations version 2017, which it is currently using, to the new system HS 2022 as from February 2022.

This will be reflected through the amendment of the Customs Management (Tariff and Classification of Goods) Regulations 2018.

A series of consultations will be carried out to sensitise and address comments from stakeholders before finalisation of the regulations.

This was announced by the principal secretary for Trade at the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Trade, Cillia Mangroo, in a press conference yesterday at Liberty House.

She noted that “Seychelles ratified the International Convention on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System, on August 21, 2020 making it the 160th Contracting Party to the Harmonized System Convention. One of its responsibilities under this convention is to remain up to date in its application of the World Customs Organisation (WCO) Harmonized System for the classification of goods, which is updated every 5 years to reflect changes in technology and trade patterns, new products, technical amendments, etc”.

Ms Mangroo explained that the advantage of using the HS System is that everything is well defined, structured and recorded, thus reducing the efforts required by the trading parties for documentation of the carried goods. Its simplicity and reliability makes it ideal for use by governments, international organisations and the private sector for many other purposes such as internal taxes, trade policies, monitoring of controlled goods, rules of origin, statistics, price monitoring, quota controls and economic research and analysis. Nevertheless, in order for all stakeholders to take full advantage of the HS it is important that all parties are using the same version of this essential tool.

“As from October this year we will conduct awareness sessions with stakeholders to familiarise them with the new HS codes and as from February 1, 2022 we will adopt the new codes,” noted Ms Mangroo.

MoU with International Trade Centre (ITC)

PS Mangroo also gave an update on the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the International Trade Centre (ITC) which will kick start ‘The African Trade Observatory (ATO)’ project in Seychelles.

“After approval by the cabinet in its sitting on March 17, the government of the Republic of Seychelles is expected to sign the MoU and it will be signed by Vice-President Ahmed Afif. The ATO is a system that aims to create a continent-wide trade information portal to facilitate intra-African trade. It will also help to monitor the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and boost intra-Africa trade by connecting interested traders within the continent,” stated Ms Mangroo.

The System, which will be available to all, will seek to collect trade-related data from member states and provide trade intelligence to both government and private sectors. With the establishment of such collaboration, it is expected that it will considerably enhance the coverage, quality and availability of real time trade data for all African countries including Seychelles.

The MoU provides the framework for the automatic trade information exchange between countries’ customs systems and the ATO, and also serves as the mechanism which will also protect the sensitivity of the data being exchanged.

Further information can be also be found the ITC’s website https://www.intracen.org/African-Trade-Observatory/ and the on African Union website https://ato.africa/en/ .

Vidya Gappy