In order to cater for the needs of its French-speaking Partner States and users, the East African Community held a meeting of tariff experts to transpose the HS 2022 edition of its Common External Tariff (CET) into the French language. The meeting took place from 13 to 18 September 2021 in Moshi, Tanzania. It was conducted with the support of the WCO, within the framework of the EU-WCO Programme for the Harmonized System in Africa (HS-Africa Programme), funded by the European Union.

The meeting was preceded by an EAC regional consultation organized in March 2021 to prepare the English linguistic version of the HS 2022 EAC CET, with the participation of all the Community Partner States. It also falls under the HS 2022 implementation work-plan established by the EAC with the support of the HS-Africa Programme following the first EAC regional consultation that took place in Mombasa from 10 to 13 September 2019 where it was identified as important to transpose the CET into the French language during the process of validation and finalization so that all EAC partner states could have access to the CET aligned in both in English and French and ensure timely and coordinated implementation.

Experts examined the 2022 edition of the EAC CET and developed the French language version of it, while also ensuring that it incorporated all the changes made to the EAC CET from July 2017 to June 2021. The 2022 edition of the EAC CET was proofread, and some errors were rectified, in particular, in Chapters 16, 63 and 70. Moreover, the progress of the preparatory work to migrate national classification systems to the HS 2022 EAC CET was discussed.

The meeting took note of the fact that, at the Community level, the 2022 edition of the EAC CET had been adopted by the EAC Council and would come into effect on 1 July 2022. Participants highlighted the importance of synchronizing and coordinating the implementation of the HS 2022 amendments across the Community, recognising that the availability of the French language version would in particular ensure that the administration of Burundi successfully completes the migration to the HS 2022 edition of the EAC CET in time.

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