Comments on the revised customs law

On October 28th, 2013, the Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (ERCA) organised a meeting to gather  ERCA management and some key  foreign business communities, including EUBFE supported by the EU Delegation, to discuss the general customs operations and the draft Revised Customs Law. Following the meeting, EUBFE was invited to query its members and come back with structured and practical comments to the draft that would be used by ERCA to improve its drafting.

 

Thanks to your prompt feedback, we prepared and sent detailed and practical comments on the draft law. 

 

To sum up: we support the positive amendments brought by the new draft, such as self-assessment procedure and post transaction audit, electronic filing, administrative fines of some infractions (vs. automatic criminal penalties), early release of goods, training as well as the simplified customs procedures. 

 

However, from your experiences, constructive comments were made on the definitions within the law, the online publication of the regulations, the insertion of principle of non-retroactivity, the operations and handling of containers, spare parts imports, goods release, the Authorised Economic Operators (AEOs), the appeal and complaints handling, HS codes and tax rates, the valuation, or even the electronic filing.

 

We hope these will be taken into consideration by ERCA. We will follow up on this on the occasion of the next meeting with ERCA