IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/162872.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Globally Uniform Harmonized System Nomenclature? Waivers for Developing Countries and Membership Development: Situation 2017

Author

Listed:
  • Weerth, Carsten

Abstract

The Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) is the most successful legally binding instrument of the World Customs Organization (WCO) with 156 contracting parties. More and more countries and economic regions are applying the HS nomenclature worldwide. But not all member states are applying the same version of the HS nomenclature. Developing countries are allowed to use another (earlier) version of the nomenclature according to article 4 HS, however the WCO does not define the term "developing countries". In the main section this paper discusses the term "developing countries" and examines the nomenclature application by HS member states and non-member states. It displays data from 2008 and 2017 on the positon of HS parties regarding the version of the nomenclature they apply and explains that not only developing nations are not applying the most actual HS 2017 nomenclature but also two advanced economies (Iceland and Singapore): 83 out of 156 contracting parties have successfully implemented the HS 2017 and 56 HS member states are still using older HS versions. Four contracting parties are planning to implement the HS 2017 in 2018 and one in 2019. 46 HS applicants are so called non-members and not HS member states in 2017. Three non-members are advanced economies (all three are WTO members): Hong Kong, Macao and Liechtenstein. The membership development of the HS is examined and future accessions are forecasted. This paper is researched by help of the WCO publications on the HS, the legal texts of the HS and the position of parties for the HS, the WCO publications for the signature and ratification of the Harmonised System Convention and by help of WTO publications on their membership and observers. The methods used during the study are analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, systematic and functional analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Weerth, Carsten, 2017. "Globally Uniform Harmonized System Nomenclature? Waivers for Developing Countries and Membership Development: Situation 2017," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 50-62.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:162872
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/162872/1/Weerth_CSJ_2017_1_50_62.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Weerth, Carsten, 2020. "The World Trade Organization and World Customs Organization key conventions and agreements (TFA, HSC, RKC): membership trends and opportunities," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 14(1), pages 107-126.
    2. Weerth, Carsten, 2018. "Advance rulings and binding pre-entry tariff classification according to Article 3 TFA: Situation 2018 - still a long way to go," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 12(2), pages 31-50.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Trade Facilitation; Legislation; Economic Integration; Developing Countries; World Customs Organization; Harmonized System;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K33 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - International Law
    • K34 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Tax Law
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F53 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:162872. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.