Having acceded to the RKC in 2019, Brazil is obliged to implement the obligatory Standards of the General Annex (GA) within a period of 36 months and the Transitional Standards within a period of 60 months.

With the financial support of the WCO Customs Cooperation Fund (CCF) China, the World Customs Organization (WCO) conducted a national workshop for Brazil on the issues and concerning implementation of the RKC. With a special focus on chapters 1 to 6 of the GA to the RKC, the 5-day workshop was held from 12-16 June 2023 in Brasilia, Brazil.

At the opening of the workshop, the Under-Secretary of Customs Administration of the Special Secretariat of the Federal Revenue of Brazil (FRB), Jackson Aluir Corbari, expressed optimism that the workshop would assist Brazil in pointing out areas in its national law that need to be addressed for better implementation of the RKC. The Under-Secretary added that the administration was developing a new system aimed at better handling of imports with a detailed component on risk management and is expected to be fully operational by December 2023. In conclusion, the Under-Secretary highlighted the issue of double degree of jurisdiction (in relation to appeals) as one of the main challenges affecting Brazil’s implementation of the RKC.

In addition, the Coordinator-General of Customs Administration, Mirela Batista, emphasized the importance of utilizing the workshop to understanding the RKC better, adding that in the end, it is expected to collate those pieces of national legislation that would need to be modified to achieve a higher level of the implementation of the RKC.

The workshop brought together officials from various business units such as risk management, Authorized Economic Operators (AEO), and border control. During the highly interactive sessions of the workshop, the participants were exposed to presentations on the organizational structure, reform and modernization updates by RFB; instruments and tools of the WCO; technical discussions on the relevant chapters of the GA to the RKC and a practical session on how to conduct an implementation assessment using the RKC Tool Kit for Quality Implementation Assessment.

Following a detailed comparative analysis of the provisions of the RKC (Chapters 1to 6 of the GA) and Brazil’s national legislation, conducted during break-out sessions, it emerged that Brazil’s national legislation was robust enough to enable a high level of implementation of the RKC.  For those standards of the RKC that are not being implemented by Brazil, an action plan on how to incorporate them in the national legislation for purposes of implementation was developed. The action plan includes the business units responsible and the specific actions to be taken by each of them. Once achieved, it is expected that Brazil would attain a higher level of implementation of the RKC.

For further information, please contact us at RKCReview@wcoomd.org.