News
World Customs Organization (WCO) has adopted a recommendation that lists recommended amendments to the Harmonized System (HS) nomenclature which will enter into force on January 1, 2017 (HS 2017).
This Recommendation is being promulgated under the provisions of Article 16 of the HS Convention, which implies that HS Contracting Parties now have six months to notify the WCO Secretariat of an objection to a recommended amendment.
Since the entry into force of the current version of the HS (HS 2012), the HS Committee has been revising this version of the HS nomenclature for almost five years. HS 2017 will be the sixth version of the HS since the Convention entered into force in 1983.
The new version of the HS includes 234 sets of amendments. Environmental and social issues are a major feature of these amendments, due to the importance of the HS as a global tool for collecting trade statistics and monitoring trade. This is borne out by the fact that the HS Convention currently has 150 contracting parties, making it the WCO's most successful international instrument to date.
