The World Customs Organization (WCO), on 14 January announced that the Seventh Meeting of the Working Group on the Comprehensive Review of the Revised Kyoto Convention (WGRKC) had been held from 09 to 13 December 2019.
The meeting was attended by 42 delegates from 19 Member Customs administrations and 7 external stakeholders.
The RKC Management Committee (RKC/MC) and the WGRKC extensively discussed items relating to the process flow, such as the "Four-step Framework" for the review, including:
- Step 1 - “Submission of proposals” and “development of recommendations”;
- Step 2 - “Assessment of developed recommendations against the RKC and existing WCO tools”;
- Step 3 - “Consideration of developed recommendations against criteria”; and
- Step 4 - “Development of amendment proposals”. The meeting also agreed on the working methodologies, the new work plan, criteria for prioritising the proposals, and prioritisation of concepts/proposals to test the use of developed criteria.
The meeting concluded that one more meeting of the WGRKC must be held from 30 March to 03 April, to finalise Step 1.
The majority of the WGRKC agreed that in principle Steps 2, 3 and 4 should be conducted by the RKC/MC, taking note of the concerns raised by some members on required human and financial resources for the RKC/MC to conduct this review work.
In the margins of the WGRKC, informal meetings on Rules of Origin (ROO) were held to further develop the joint proposal on Specific Annex K (Rules of Origin), which would be discussed in a back-to-back meeting with the 38th Session of the Technical Committee on Rules of Origin (03 to 04 February 2020).
The Chairperson concluded that the proceedings of the WGRKC would depend on discussions and decisions at the next RKC/MC Meeting to be held 10 to 12 February.
Story by: Riaan de Lange