Certificates of Origin – Tccia Website

Tanzania Available Certificates of Orign

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BACKGROUND OF CERTIFICATES OF ORIGIN ISSUANCE BY TCCIA

TCCIA started issuing CoO in 1999 following the government of Tanzania’s decision to delegate such role to the private sector. While this bold and important milestone was new in Tanzania, the role of chambers of Commerce in managing Certificates of Origin and rules of origin can be traced back to the 1923 Geneva Convention relating to simplification of customs formalities (Article 11) as eventually upheld by the Kyoto Convention.

The government of Tanzania decided to delegate this role to the TCCIA among other reasons; the organization’s countrywide network, reliability, impartiality, direct link with exporters and therefore making it possible to efficiently serve the business community across the country.

WHAT IS A CERTIFICATE OF ORIGIN?

A Certificate of Origin (CO) is an important international trade document attesting that goods in a particular export shipment have been wholly obtained, produced, manufactured, or processed in a particular country. It is also a declaration by exporter.

There are two major types of Cos

i) Non-preferential COs, issued for goods which will not enjoy any preferential treatment
ii) Preferential Cos, issues in the context of preferential trade agreements which will enable
exporters to benefit from tariff exemption or reduction for eligible exports.

COs may be requested by Customs Administrations, importers, freight forwarders or banks for clearance of letters of credit.

WHAT ARE RULES OF ORIGIN?

Rules of Origin (RoO) are the criteria that set out the processing required to be undertaken locally in order for a product to be considered to be of local origin. RoO play a major role in international trade and can be broadly categorized into two of criteria: non-preferential and preferential RoO. Non- preferential RoO are a set of criteria used to allocate origin to a product entering a country or territory and are typically a set of exhaustive criteria that enables customs authorities to attribute a country of origin to the imported product entering its territory. Preferential RoO in contrast are those sets of rules

and criteria that define when a product has obtained local economic origin and are linked directly to trade preferences and market access.

Virtually every country in the world considers the origin of imported goods when determining the duty that will be applied to the goods or, in some cases, whether the goods may be legally imported at all.

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TRADITIONAL WAY OF ISSUANCE OF CERTIFICATE OF ORIGIN

The traditional issuance procedure of these certificates has been a manual procedure which involves five steps before the goods are exported. These steps which an export has to go through is costly both in-terms of time and money. The procedure is accompanied by several challenges including a big volume of certificates that has to be signed by hand leading to wastage of time. The exporters have to go to the Chamber offices physically, collect empty certificate, fill it up and bring it back for signing. Apart from going to the Chamber twice before the CoO gets signed, the exporter has to visit other relevant authorities before finally completing the process. Specifically the process involves; i) exporters physically visiting the TCCIA offices to pick-up the forms, ii) go back to their business premises to fill up the forms, iii) go through other relevant authorities to acquire respective papers (permits), and iv) bring back the filled form to the Chamber for signature, v) go to the local customs offices for stamping of his certificate. In some cases during filling up the form errors are committed and this will necessitates the repeat of the whole process. In several occasions customs officers have rejected the certificates due to the mismatch of signatures between the sample in their references and the one on the submitted certificates. This has led to the over-stay of the goods at the borders. Such procedures add the cost of doing business and as the result the final consumer pays for the additional cost reducing people’s welfare.

ELECTRONIC CERTIFICATE OF ORIGN (ECO)

Online CO service is provided to speed up the application and issuance process as well as provide a more secure documentation environment. This is possible as eCO system is able to include security feature an online verification of authenticity of Cos issued electronically.

Our eCOs are delivered to you in hours and are compliant with international standards. TCCIA’s eCOs are particularly developed to enable exporters complete the export procedure in a more cost effective way by reducing paper work and minimizing physical movement.

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES?

TCCIA’s eCOs save time and money bypassing
the delay and expense of employing messengers to obtain certification. After a few simple steps, and certification by TCCIA, collect your dully filled certificate. With TCCIA eCOs, freight forwarders can apply for COs on behalf of their clients and be in possession of them in hours. And TCCIA eCO procedures are compliant with the Certificate of Origin Guidelines of the International Chamber of Commerce, increasingly valued by customs administrations around the world.

1. Reduce messenger costs
With eCOs the physical movements of exporter’s messengers to the chamber offices are reduced and only one appearance to collect the dully filled printed form will be necessary.

2. Reduce administration costs
Costs related to manual signing of CO are removed. Also the management cost related to serving customers coming to gather empty certificates is avoided.

3. Reduce errors
Reduce error occurrence probability which is common in processing the manual documents and hence saving the cost of repetitive processing of the documents. For-example, with eCOs the classification of a product’s customs tariff (HS codes) is simplified. The system will automatically generate the HS code once the product details have been entered.

4.Save time
Reduce the time of dealing with customs queries. It is common for the customs officers to raise queries on the certificates of origin and it takes a long time to sort out the queries hence delaying exports for days and sometimes weeks. With eCOs customs officers can view all the details regarding a consignment via the system and all the queries are addressed immediately.

5. Compliance to Standards
Comply with the Certificate of Origin issuance Guidelines of the International Chamber of Commerce. The guidelines:

• Support transparent issuance standard procedures
• Provide assurance for independent, responsible, and accountable issuance
• Give credibility to the COs issued by chambers of commerce
• Raise the level of acceptance by customs administrations and the business community

Security
Includes security feature for an online verification of authenticity of CoOs issued electronically.
Reliability
TCCIA authorized signatory can approve certificates even when they are away from the office eliminating the wait time for the exporters.
Accessibility
The System can easily be accessible anywhere via online platforms (browsers) on computers or via mobile devices (smart phones/tablets) and can also provide feedback communication through simplified emails between exporters, customs and issuers.
Real time reporting
Provides real time statistics on export economic trends based on various factors (i.e. Exporters, Trading Blocks, Transportation Modes, Currency, Origin Criterion and Export Values) under specific time line.

Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (TCCIA) |