(Victoria, 2 to 4 July 2013)

Under a project financed by the United Kingdom Customs Co-operation Fund, a National Workshop was held in Victoria (Seychelles) from 2 to 4 July 2013 aimed at (i) presenting the Harmonized System (HS) Convention to senior management from the Directorate General and Customs centres with responsibility for tariff classification and (ii) presenting two WCO Recommendations on the improvement of tariff classification work and related infrastructure and on the introduction of programmes for binding pre-entry classification information, in response to the questions raised in the diagnostic tool developed by the WCO.

As Seychelles is not yet a Contracting Party to the HS Convention and is currently applying the 2007 version of the HS, the purpose of the mission was not only to examine the conditions under which the Seychelles Administration could consider acceding thereto, but also to make recommendations to improve tariff classification work.

The implementation of the 2012 version of the HS is encountering difficulties due to the fact that Customs is not the only Administration responsible for applying it, having to
co-ordinate this action with the Department of Trade. It was nevertheless agreed that this obstacle should not be a critical impediment to accession to the HS Convention. In this connection, the Administration will continue its efforts to adopt WCO standards on classification work.