IMPLEMENTATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE AGREEMENT

STATEMENTS FROM MEMBERS UNDER ARTICLE 15.2

Statement by Côte d'Ivoire to the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade
26-27 February 2020

The following communication, dated 26 February 2020, is being circulated at the request of the delegation of Côte d'Ivoire.

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1.  I am taking the floor today to inform you of the implementation of the TBT Agreement in Côte d’Ivoire. My name is Agnimel Fréjus Lasme and I am responsible for international trade agreements at the Directorate for International and Subregional Cooperation in the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

2.  In February 2015, Côte d’Ivoire officially established by decree the National Inter-Institutional Advisory Committee on WTO Agreements (CNIC-OMC), which is responsible for coordinating the implementation of WTO agreements, as well as all multilateral matters related to international trade.

3.  This entity comprises focal points and representatives of government and parastatal agencies, the private sector and civil society working on international trade matters. The CNIC-OMC meets once every three months and whenever the need arises. Furthermore, there are subcommittees for matters that may be specific to an agreement or topic area, such as the SPS/TBT subcommittee, which meets once every two months, or at the request of the Chair.

4.  At the national level, thanks to technical assistance activities, particularly the regional trade policy course and the WTO national SPS workshop in December 2018, the SPS/TBT subcommittee's attention has been drawn to aspects of the transparency principle and, more specifically, the non-notification of certain measures. Thus, since early 2019, the subcommittee has been compiling the technical regulations that are already in force or have been proposed. The matter was referred to the notification authority in July 2019 and our first notifications were submitted through the TBT IMS online notification system that month.

5.  In addition, following the regional TBT workshop held by the WTO in Abidjan in October 2019, the status of notifications by country revealed that Article 15.2 on the implementation of the Agreement had not yet been notified.

6.  This workshop was attended by key players, namely the notification authority, Côte d'Ivoire Normalisation (CODINORM), the Directorate for Control and Quality, as well as the Service responsible for the conformity assessment procedure (VOC), which led to the organization of working sessions of the SPS/TBT subcommittee in October 2019. The draft notification was then shared with all CNIC-OMC members for comments.

7.  The Secretariat, which assisted us in this process, must be commended for its invaluable support. Côte d’Ivoire eventually notified Article 15.2 on 15 January 2020.