Under the TFA, Member State's obligations regarding publication and availability of information include the following:
• Publishing promptly a range of information related to importation, exportation and transit requirements and procedures (see TFA Article 1.1 a-j in ANNEX);
• Making available through the internet a description of importation, exportation and transit procedures, the required forms and documents, and contact information on enquiry points (whenever practicable, also in one of the official languages of the WTO);
• Establishing an enquiry point (or several) to answer questions from governments, traders and other interested parties, and notifying their contact information; and
• Notifying to the Trade Facilitation Committee the official places and URLs of websites where the Member has made available the above information.
WTO also developed Background Note to outline the relationship between TFA and SPS Agreement. (https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/sps_e/tf_sps_e.pdf). In the Background Note, it has stated that as regards to publication and availability of information, there are several intersections between the TFA and the SPS Agreement where SPS requires prompt publication of SPS regulations such as laws, decrees or ordinances which are applicable generally and to establish an SPS enquiry point to answer reasonable questions from other Members and provide relevant documents regarding SPS measures, control and inspection procedures, pesticide tolerance, etc.
As a trend set by International Organizations to regulate the publication and availability of trade information, there are ongoing efforts by many countries to establish Trade Information Portal to meet the regulatory requirement for global trade such as WTO TFA, SPS Agreement, etc.
With the rapid implementation of Single Window system, the development of Trade Information Portal should be taken into consideration as it requires similar nature of governance/framework to implement it i.e. coordination of information gathering/updates from various government agencies, harmonization/unification of enquiry points and process/procedures to be published etc.
Therefore, it is timely for UN/CEFACT Domain group to look into/recommend a best practices for such implementation. |