Accreditation workshop for Russian-speaking HS Expert Trainers in the Europe Region

Tariff classification of commodities - one of the fundamentals of Customs control and procedures – is not only a notoriously complex technical area, but is also prone to non-uniform application of legal provisions, fraud and what is known as “tariff engineering”, with a potentially dramatic impact on the revenue collection function of Customs and accuracy of the trade statistics. Hence, the WCO is reinforcing its efforts to provide high-quality training and technical assistance on this subject to its Members, with an emphasis on regionalisation of these activities and a possibility to offer them in as many languages as possible.

It is in this context that the WCO conducted an accreditation workshop for Expert Trainers on the Harmonized System (HS), from 16 to 20 April, in the RTC Dnepropetrovsk (Ukraine), under the sponsorship of the CCF Japan. Twelve participants from nine countries of the Europe Region attended the event, and the total of six officers have been accredited. This means that a new capacity has been created in the Region – that of providing training on the HS entirely in Russian. There is no doubt that this will facilitate the understanding of technical matters related to the use of the HS and HS-related instruments by the Members using the Russian language, also allowing to take account of the specificity of the problems faced by these administrations.

It goes without saying that the workshop was also a great opportunity for the HS classification experts of the Region to network, exchange experience and establish informal working contacts with each other. The participants highly appreciated the information and the insights received from the WCO facilitators, the RTC experts, and from each other, which would allow them to enhance their capacity as trainers and tariff specialists.

The accreditation workshops are part of the WCO strategic approach to obtain a wider access to Capacity Building experts and to ensure their services to the WCO Columbus Programme and other WCO modernisation initiatives.

To further benefit from this momentum, a closed workshop forum has been created at the new WCO Learning and Knowledge Community portal –CliKC!-. It allows easy access to all workshop material and outputs, as well as a continued dialogue amongst the workshop participants and the facilitators.