Phnom Penh, 28 June 2022: Every five years, the World Customs Organisation (WCO) updates the Harmonised System (HS) of tariff classification. Once that exercise is complete, ASEAN must revise the more detailed ASEAN Harmonised Tariff Nomenclature (AHTN) to be consistent with the new HS code. To improve the officials’ technical skills and strengthen their understanding of the transposition process and application of the methodology for free trade agreement such as ATIGA, RCEP and AANZFTA, ERIA’s Capacity Building Program, supported by the Australian Government, held a 7 day online technical training, Transposition of Tariff Commitment from AHTN 2017 into 2022. The training was co-hosted with the Ministry of Commerce.

HE BUN Chanthy, Under Secretary of State, Ministry of Commerce, Cambodia, in his opening remarks, emphasised the importance of updating the respective schedule of tariff commitments into the latest tariff nomenclature through transposition procedures. Furthermore, the transposition process could be used to verify the revised tariff reduction schedules (TRS) submitted by other ASEAN member states (AMS). In doing this verification, Cambodia (and other AMS) has to do her own transposition and compare the results of their own transposition with the revised TRS submitted by other AMS.

The workshop focused on 13 issues, including: understanding AHTN correlation table 2017-2022, cleaning the data of the TSR, copying the data in ATIGA/AANZ/RCEP in AHTN 2017 to AHTN 2022, combining the tariffs on the same 2022 AHTN code as well as policy decision on how to decide what tariffs to apply when merging of different tariff lines with different tariff rates.

The workshop was facilitated by Mr Ahmad Syaukat Romawi, a former ASEAN Secretariat official and renowned expert on this topic. Thirty-seven government officials from various ministries participated in the training workshop, with most coming from the Ministry Economic and Finance and General Department of Customs and Excise.