Article first appeared in www.wcoomd.org
The World Customs Organization (WCO) has released the 2017 edition of the Harmonized System Nomenclature, the world’s global standard for classifying goods in international trade, which will enter into force on 1 January 2017.
Used by over 200 countries and economic or Customs unions as well as by international organizations such as the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Harmonized System (HS) Convention currently has 154 Contracting Parties, making it the WCO’s most successful instrument to date.
The 2017 Edition of the HS Nomenclature includes 242 sets of amendments (including some complementary amendments): 85 relating to the agricultural sector; 45 to the chemical sector; 22 to the wood sector; 15 to the textile sector; 6 to the base metal sector; 25 to the machinery sector; 18 to the transport sector and an additional 26 that apply to a variety of other sectors.
The 2017 edition of the Harmonized System comprises a total of 5,387 separate groups of goods identified by a 6-digit code (compared to 5,205 in the 2012 edition).
Click here for the HS Nomenclature 2017 Edition.
HS-related Council Recommendations
The Council, at its 127/128 Sessions in July 2016, adopted two HS-related Recommendations amended consequential to the Council Recommendation of 27 June 2014 concerning the amendment of the HS Nomenclature. First is the revised Recommendation of 18 June 1996 on the insertion in national statistical nomenclatures of subheadings for substances controlled under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Second is the Recommendation on the use of standard units of quantity to facilitate the collection, comparison and analysis of international statistics based on the HS Nomenclature 2017 Edition. With the acceptance of the revised Recommendation, the version of 24 June 2011 has been revoked with effect from 1 January 2017.
Click here for the HS-related Council Recommendations.
Correlation Tables HS 2012 – 2017
Some corrections have been made in the tables correlating the 2012 and 2017 versions of the Harmonized System.
Click here for the Correlation Tables HS 2012 – 2017.
