From 14 to 18 November 2022, the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) hosted a national workshop on the Harmonized System and commodity classification at the ERS Headquarters in Ezulwini, Eswatini. The workshop was delivered by the WCO within the framework of the EU-WCO Programme for the Harmonized System in Africa (HS-Africa Programme), funded by the European Union as part of the comprehensive package of assistance to support the ERS work on modernising the national tariff classification work model.
In their opening remarks, Mr. Brightwell Nkambule, ERS Commissioner General, and Mrs. Gugu Mahlinza, Commissioner Customs and Excise, highlighted the timeliness and the high relevance of the workshop as an important contribution towards increasing the capacity of the Customs in the area of tariff classification. They stressed that the uniform application of the HS was crucial for a number of key areas of ERS work, and was particularly important in the context of the recently implemented national advance ruling system.
The workshop was attended by 16 officers from across different units of the ERS and border posts. Workshop participants examined a wide range of fundamental theoretical and practical aspects of the application of the HS. To bring together the theory and practice, participants worked together on a number of case studies where they classified specific products which presented relevant complexities in classification. Prior to the workshop, participants had completed the e-learning course “HS Foundation” available on WCO CLiKC! platform and were thus well prepared for the face-to-face sessions of the workshop.
The workshop also offered an opportunity to pilot new training materials made available under the HS-Africa Programme. Those materials have been developed with the aim of establishing a standardized set of tools for HS trainers to deliver a five-day workshop covering all of the most essential areas of the HS related to the practical work of commodity classification. The materials used during the workshop received a high level of appreciation from the participants and will be used for similar training activities in the future.
For more information, please contact hs@wcoomd.org.