A WCO National Seminar on the Harmonized System was held in the headquarters of ADAU (Asociación de Despachantes de Aduana de Uruguay) in Montevideo, Uruguay, from 19 to 21 March 2014. The Seminar was a joint initiative of the WCO, the Uruguay Customs (Dirección Nacional de Aduanas) and ADAU and was attended by 120 participants from both Uruguay Customs and ADAU. The responsible for customs clearance in Uruguay Customs, Cr. Guzmán Mañes, highlighted the ongoing support of the WCO to meet the demands of Uruguay in its capacity building initiatives and thanked the representative from the WCO Secretariat’s Directorate of Tariff and Trade Affairs for facilitating the high level discussions on tariff classification issues.

During the Seminar the group discussed the use and future prospects of the Harmonized System (HS) and some practical cases of tariff classification in relevant areas. Mr. Guzmán Mañes stressed the importance of the HS as the most widely used instrument of the WCO, responsible for the correct and uniform classification of goods – a key issue for Customs administrations and other relevant international trade stakeholders from both the public and private sectors.

Also present at the opening of the seminar was the president of ADAU, Pedro Castro, who thanked the WCO for its continuous support on the matter and stressed the relevance of the Seminar and its contribution to the effectiveness of the work carried out by ADAU.