The WCO carried on the series of technical assistance on the implementation of the Harmonized System (HS) with the Member states of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC), within the framework of the EU-WCO Programme for the HS in Africa. From 7 to 11 December 2020, the Customs administration of Chad hosted a workshop focusing on the latest version of the HS and optimization of the process by which national tariff is migrated to new HS versions.

The workshop brought together a multidisciplinary team of specialists from across several departments of the Chad Customs administration involved in the management of the national tariff. Together with experts from Cameroun, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, as well as the Secretariats of the CEMAC and the WCO, who facilitated the workshop, they revisited various aspects of the implementation of the CEMAC Common External Tariff (CET) in Chad.

The workshop demonstrated the strengthening of regional cooperation of the CEMAC Members with regard to tariff matters and growing recognition of the importance to ensure Community-wide coordination when it comes to the implementation of the HS. Aligning the CEMAC CET and national tariffs of the CEMAC Members to the latest version of the HS is seen as an increasingly indispensable consideration with the entry into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Following the workshop, the Customs administration of Chad officially notified the WCO Secretariat of the implementation of the latest version of the HS, thereby completing the procedure of migrating the national tariff to the HS 2017 version of the CEMAC CET. The EU-WCO Programme for the HS in Africa and the CEMAC Secretariat will further work in supporting CEMAC Member states with capacity building and enhancing tariff infrastructure.

For more information, please contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org.