From 1 to 3 May 2017, the WCO Secretariat took part in the work of the meeting of the Nomenclature and Tariff Committee of the CEMAC Commission, which focused on the transposition of the HS 2017 edition into CEMAC’s Common External Tariff (CET). The meeting was held in Douala, Cameroon, and was attended by representatives of five of the six CEMAC Member countries.
The cooperation between the WCO and CEMAC, governed by a Memorandum of Understanding signed on 29 June 2013, covers various areas, including the Nomenclature and CET of CEMAC. Under its provisions, the WCO Secretariat and the CEMAC Commission agree to establish and apply between themselves a systematic and effective mechanism for consultation, cooperation and exchange of information in these areas.
The current version of CEMAC’s CET is based on the HS 2007 edition. Cooperation between the WCO and CEMAC for the purpose of transposing the HS 2017 edition into the CET began in December 2016, when the WCO Secretariat was requested to lend its support to verification of the draft Community Tariff resulting from the work completed by an expert panel from CEMAC, which had previously convened in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in November 2016.
During the current meeting of the CEMAC Nomenclature and Tariff Committee, the Secretariat presented its comments on the revised draft and made some suggestions for refining the alignment of the CET with the HS 2017 edition. The Committee adopted the suggested refinements, and the CEMAC Commission was tasked with forwarding the final version of the CET to the next CEMAC Council of Ministers meeting for its adoption and publication by the end of 2017.