twentieth ANNUAL REVIEW OF THE IMPLEMENTATION
AND
OPERATION OF THE AGREEMENT ON RULES OF ORIGIN
Note by the Secretariat[1]
Article
6.1 of the Agreement on Rules of Origin provides that "the Committee shall
review annually the implementation and operation of Part II and Part III of
this Agreement having regard to its objectives". The outcome of such a review will be the
Committee's Annual Review to the Council for Trade in Goods on the
implementation and operation of the Agreement on Rules of Origin. This background
document is circulated by the Secretariat in preparation for the 20th
annual review of the implementation and operation of the Agreement, to be
conducted at the meeting of the Committee on Rules of Origin on 30 October
2014.
1.1. Government representatives of all WTO Members
and Observers are also Members and Observers to the CRO. In addition, the
following international organizations also have observer
status at the CRO: ACP, EFTA, IADB, IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, WCO and World Bank.
2.1. Mr. Ken Chang-keng CHEN (Chinese Taipei) was
elected Chairman of the Committee in April 2014.
3.1. The Committee on Rules of Origin (CRO) held
two formal meetings on 10 April and 30 October 2014. The minutes of these
meetings are contained in documents G/RO/M/62 and [G/RO/M/63] respectively. Some informal meetings and a series of
bilateral consultations between the Chairman and selected Members have also
taken place in 2014.
4
Notifications
4.1. With regard to the work under Part III of the
Agreement, the CRO took note of a number of new notifications under Article 5,
which significantly improved compliance with that notification requirement.
According to notifications received to date, 42 Members currently implement
some type of non-preferential rules of origin while 50 other Members do no
implement rules of origin for non-preferential purposes. Forty Members must
still submit their notification under Article 5 of the Agreement.
4.2. A number of notifications of preferential
rules of origin have also been received. Most notifications were submitted
to the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements and the Committee on Trade and
Development and subsequently circulated to the CRO. All Members of the WTO
currently implement at least one set of preferential rules of origin,
reflecting the widespread participation of Members in regional trade
agreements.
5
Work of the
Committee on Rules of Origin
5.1. With
regard to the Harmonization Work Programme under Part IV of the Agreement, the
Secretariat informed the Committee that the transposition exercise had been
concluded and that all draft harmonized rules had now been transposed to the
most recent version of the Harmonized System. The results of that work were presented to the
Committee and circulated in document JOB/RO/5. The Committee took note of that work and
examined the transposed draft rules of origin of HS Chapters 1 to 40 to verify the
technical accuracy of the transposition exercise.
5.2. Pending
the continuation of the Harmonization Work Programme, the Committee agreed to
initiate a transparency exercise to exchange information about non-preferential
rules of origin currently in place. In
fact, in
the absence of harmonized rules, the only disciplines that apply to
non-preferential rules of origin are those of Article 2 of the WTO Agreement on
Rules of Origin. Therefore, Members agreed to engage in an exercise to better
understand the design, coverage and effect of existing non-preferential rules.
5.3. Finally, the CRO also conducted the first
review of new developments in preferential rules of origin for LDCs according
to the requirements of Ministerial Decision WT/L/917. In that context, the Secretariat presented to
the Committee the Database on Preferential Trade Agreements (http://ptadb.wto.org). In addition, the Committee reviewed the rules
of a new duty-free and quota-free scheme put in place by Chile for LDCs
(G/RO/N/124).
6.1. The CRO considered its
report to the CTG (G/RO/W/150).
__________
[1] This document has been prepared under the Secretariat's own
responsibility and is without prejudice to the positions of Members or to their
rights and obligations under the WTO.