ASEAN customs to start harmonizing tariffs next year

JAKARTA (JP): Heads of customs administrations from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) pledged yesterday to facilitate smooth flows of goods and agreed to use harmonized tariff terminology by next year.

The ASEAN customs director generals also formulated an ASEAN customs vision 2020 during their two-day annual meeting in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, which ended yesterday.

They said they would speed up the implementation of harmonized tariff terms to simplify trade transactions.

"This would avoid unnecessary confusion or complexity at the border about the appropriate classification of a product and facilitate cross-border flows of goods in the region," they said.

Brunei, the Philippines and Singapore will implement the system starting next year. Indonesia will work toward implementing it next year. Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam will implement it in the year 2000.

Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar -- three potential ASEAN members that attended the meeting as observers -- will adopt the system.

The director generals also agreed to an initial set of procedures where work on harmonization should begin.

These include correlating business hours for border customs offices and allowing declarants to lodge provisional or incomplete customs declarations to release their goods and submit all the necessary information within a specified period.

They also agreed to allow lodgement, checking and registration of goods declarations prior to their arrival. And to allow pre- clearance of goods and explore simplification and harmonization of procedures for goods in transit.

They agreed to look into establishing common procedures for temporary admission of goods, and ways to improve green lane systems for some goods.

Because of the increasing competitiveness of the world's economies, they formulated the customs vision to provide a framework and focus for ASEAN customs activities.

"We agreed on the following vision for the year 2020: an ASEAN customs partnership for world class standards and excellence in efficiency, professionalism and service, and uniformity through harmonized procedures, to promote trade and investment and to protect the health and well-being of the ASEAN community," they said.

To realize the vision, they agreed to collectively develop administrative and technical cooperation on customs.

Technical cooperation includes procedures for goods in transit and temporary admission, automation, cargo processing, tariff classification, customs valuation, rules of origin, post-entry audit and risk management.

On automation, they agreed to develop an ASEAN electronic data interchange (EDI) that would comply with United Nations Rules for EDI for Administrations, Commerce and Transport.

Indonesia uses the EDI system to back up its new customs procedures that began last month to expedite customs document processing.

As most importers do not yet subscribe to the EDI system, Indonesia's customs office will continue to provide manual processing of declarations until June 15.

But customs officials have made it clear that the customs office will not accept manually-processed declarations after June 15.

After this date all declarations must go through the EDI system or be handed to the EDI center on diskettes. (rid)