RESTRICTED  
  
G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
29 August  2023 
(23-5806) Page: 1/68 
Committee on Trade Facilitation   
 
  
MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE COMMITTEE ON TRADE FACILITATION  
21-22 MARCH 2023  
CHAIRPERSON: H.E. MR ADAMU MOHAMMED ABDULHAMID (NIGERIA)  
Contents  
1   MATTERS RELATING TO THE IMPLEMENTATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE 
TRADE FACILITATION AGREEMENT (TFA)  ................................ ................................ ........  3 
1.1   Notificat ions from Members  ................................ ................................ .........................  3 
A. Notifications under Article 16 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement  ................................ .... 3 
B. Notifications under Article 17 and Article 19 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement  ................  4 
C. Notifications under Article 1:4, 10:4:3, 10:6:2 et 12:2:2 of the Trade Facilitation 
Agreemen t ................................ ................................ ................................ .......................  5 
D. Notifications under Article 22 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement  ................................ .... 8 
1.2   Status of Ratification and Notification Process  ................................ ...............................  11 
1.3   Status of Definitive Implementation Dates  ................................ ................................ ... 13 
i. Review of the effectiveness of G/TFA/INF/1/Rev.1 (G/TFA/2, para. 9.2(iv)  .......................  13 
ii. Voluntary Update by Members of Status of Definitive Date Implementation 
(G/TFA/2, para  9.2(vi))  ................................ ................................ ................................ .... 14 
2   EXPERIENCE SHARING/THEMATIC DISCUSSIONS  ................................ .....................  14 
3   GOOD PRACTICES AND BUILDING BLOCKS OF SUCCESSFUL NTFCS (G/TFA/2, 
PARA  9.3(V))  ................................ ................................ ................................ .................  14 
4   PROMOTING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF WTO TRADE FACILITATION AGREEMENT 
THROUGH DIGITAL REVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENCE TECHNOLOGIES – 
COMMUNICATION FROM CHINA (G /TFA/W/90)  ................................ ............................  17 
5   REQUEST BY THE UNITED STATES REGARDING INDONESIA'S CUSTOMS 
PROCEDURES FOR INTANGIBLE PRODUCTS  ................................ ................................ ... 24 
6   IMPROVEMENTS TO THE FUNCTIONING OF THE CTG SUBSIDIARY BODIES  ...............  27 
A. Report by the Chair of the Committee on Trade Facilitation to the Council for Trade in 
Goods  on the Current Functioning of the Committee on Trade Facilitation (G/TFA/W/88)  ............  27 
B. Functioning of t he CTG and its Subsidiary Bodies - Communication from Argentina, 
Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay – JOB/TF/232/Rev.1  ................................ .............  28 
7   RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC IN THE COMMITTEE ON TRADE FACILITATION  ..........  33 
A. Report by the Chair of the Committee on Trade Facilitation to the Council for Trade in 
Goods  on the Committee's Work in Response to the Pandemic – G/TFA/W/89  ...........................  33 
B. Trade Facilitation during a Crisis: Lessons Learned from COVID -19 – Presentation by 
the United Kingdom  ................................ ................................ ................................ .........  33 
C. Compendium: Sharing Experiences Related to the COVID -19 Crisis as of 1 July 2021 
(G/TFA/W/40/Rev.4) – Request from Canada for Consideration of Possible Next Steps  ...............  36 G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  8   REQUEST BY THE COMMITTEE THAT THE WTO ECONOMIC RESEARCH AND 
STATISTICS DIVISION UPDATE IT S 2015 WORLD TRADE REPORT ON THE BENEFITS 
AND CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTING THE WTO TRADE FACILITATION AGREEMENT, 
INCLUDING THE DATA PROJECTIONS, AND REPORT THE RESULTS TO THE TRADE 
FACILITATION COMMITTEE NO LATER THAN ITS FIRST FORMAL MEETING OF 2023 
(G/TFA/ 2, PARA 9.3(IX))  ................................ ................................ ..............................  38 
9   "THE EVOLVING CONTRIBUTION OF TRADE FACILITATION POLICIES TO 
ENHANCING  TRADE" - PRESENTATION BY OECD  ................................ ............................  44 
10   THE TRADE FACILITATION AGREEMENT FACILITY – ITEMS RELATED TO  THE 
FRAMEWORK (G/TFA/3)  ................................ ................................ ................................  48 
10.1   Regular update to the Trade Facilitation Committee (G/TFA/TFAF /3) ..............................  48 
11   REPORT BY THE UNITED STATES ON THE INFORMAL SESSION ON DISASTER 
PREPAREDNESS HELD ON 21 MARCH  ................................ ................................ .............  49 
12   OTHER BUSINESS  ................................ ................................ ................................ .... 50 
13   ELECTION OF CHAIRPERSON  ................................ ................................ ...................  50 
ANNEX 1  ................................ ................................ ................................ ........................  52 
 
 
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  1  MATTERS RELATING TO THE IMPLEMENTATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE TRADE 
FACILITATION AGREEMENT (TFA)  
1.1.  The Chair welcomed delegations and recalled that the agenda for the meeting had been 
circulated in documents  WTO/AIR/TFA/2 5/Rev.1  and WTO/AIR/TFA/2 5/Rev.1 /Corr.1 . 
1.2.  The Committee agreed  to continue the practice of holding Item 2 of the agenda "Experience 
sharing/ thematic  discussions" in informal mode, to allow for frank and intera ctive exchanges. 
The Committee also agreed  that observers to the meeting could remain throughout the informal 
session.  
1.1  Notifications from Members  
1.3.  The Chair informed the Committee that a notification from Paraguay had been received recently  
and would be tak en up at the next meeting of the Committee.  
A. Notifications under Article 16 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement  
1.4.  The Chair drew the Committee's attention to the first group of notifications, namely those under 
Article 16 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA, the Agreement). Since the last meeting of the 
Committee, 4 notifications had been circulated under this article.  
1.5.  The first notification was from Belize , circulated  in document G/TFA/N/ BLZ/4 and 
G/TFA/N/BLZ/4/Corr.1 .  
1.6.  The delega te of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.7.  We thank Belize for providing additional information on its technical assistance and capacity 
building needs, taking note of areas where donors have yet to be identified.  
1.8.  The next notification was from Ecuador , circulated in document G/TFA/N/ ECU/5 .  
1.9.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.10.  We thank Ecuador for providing an update on its technical assistance and capacity building 
needs.  We look forw ard to continued partnership with Ecuador on Single Window implementation 
through the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation.  
1.11.  The Committee took up the notification from Kenya , circulated in document G/TFA/N/K EN/5.  
1.12.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.13.  We thank Kenya for providing additional information on its technical assistance and capacity 
building needs. We look forward to continuing our work with Kenya on TFA implementation through 
TradeMa rk East Africa projects such as those related to freedom of transit, use of international 
standards, single window, streamlining formalities, border agency cooperation, disciplines on fees 
and charges, test procedures, inspections, and publication of infor mation.  
1.14.  The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
1.15.  Japan appreciates Kenya's notification on the arrangements and progress made in the 
provision of technical assistance and capacity building support of category  C designations.  
1.16.  Japan has been continuou sly providing technical assistance to Kenya. Regarding the 
implementation of Article 8 of the TFA, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Japan 
Customs, supported the Project on Capacity Development for Trade Facilitation and Border Control 
in East Africa.  The Project contributed to establishing an efficient operation of One Stop Border Posts 
(OSBPs) and to enhancing the Customs administration 's capacity for efficient and effective border 
control. We hope our support for this project will lea d to the full implementation of Article 8 by Kenya 
within the deadline that it notifi ed. G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  1.17.  The following notification was from Nicaragua , circulated  in document G/TFA/N/ NIC/4/Rev.1 .  
1.18.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the foll owing:   
1.19.  We thank Nicaragua for providing an update on its technical assistance and capacity building 
needs and we take note of areas where donors have not been identified.  
1.20.  The delegate of the European Union  indicated the following:  
1.21.  The EU welcomes the notificati ons made by Belize, Ecuador, Kenya and Nicaragua on the 
progress in the provision of technical assistance and capacity building support. We appreciate the 
transparency provided by the Members.  
1.22.  The Committee took note of the notifications and of the statements  made .  
B. Notifications under Article 17 and Article 19 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement  
1.23.  The Chair drew the Committee's attention to notifications under Article 17 and Article 19 of 
the TFA which cover the Early Warning Mechanism and the extension of implementation dates for 
provisions in categories B and C. There were four notifications under this Article and one notification 
under Article 19.  
1.24.  The first notification was from Ecuador , circulated  in document G/TFA/N/ ECU/1/Add.5. 
1.25.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.26.  We thank Ecuador for its timely notification. The United States supports this 18 -month 
extension request.  
1.27.  The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
1.28.  Japan appreciates Ecuador 's efforts to implement Articles 2.2, 7.4, 7.7 and 10.2 of the TFA. 
We welcome Ecuador 's timely notification and explanation of its need to extend the deadlines.  
1.29.  The next notification was from Namibia  and was circulated in document 
G/TFA/N/ NAM/1/Add.3 . It notifies extension requests for a number of provisions. In the same 
notification, Namibia also notifies the shifting of a provision from category B to category  C with an 
extended implementation date .  
1.30.  The delegate of Namibia  indicated the following:  
1.31.  I would like to thank the Secretariat and UNCTAD for their continued support to ensure that 
we implement Namibia's obligations under the TFA.  
1.32.  As you may recall following our notification in 2022 Namibia  notified on 23 February a shift 
between  categories as well as an extension to an implementation date due to the challenges that 
we indicated when we notified  in 2021. We still need technical assistance and support to implement 
this commitment. Therefore , we call for support for the extension of this definitive date.   
1.33.  The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
1.34.  Japan appreciates Namibia 's commitment to the implementation of the Agreement  and 
welcomes its timely notification. We would welcome Namibia 's further explanation to the Committee 
about its needs and challenges, and the background of its shifting the category of Article 1.1 from B 
to C. 
1.35.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.36.  We thank Nam ibia for its timely notification . The United States supports this 18 -month 
extension request and shifting Article 1.1 from category B to C.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  1.37.  The next notification taken up was from Nicaragua , circulated  in document 
G/TFA/N/ NIC/1/Add.4 .  
1.38.  The delegate of Japan  indicated th e following:  
1.39.  Japan appreciates Nicaragua 's efforts to implement Article 1.3 of the TFA. We welcome 
Nicaragua 's timely notification and explanation of its need to extend the deadlines.  
1.40.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.41.  We thank Ni caragua for its timely notification and support this 18 -month extension request.  
1.42.  The Committee took up the notification from Seychelles  in document G/TFA/N/ SYC/1/Add. 3.  
1.43.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.44.  We thank Seychelles for its timely notification and the United States supports this 12 -month 
extension request.  
1.45.  The delegate of the European Union  indicated the following:  
1.46.  The EU welcomes timely notifications by Ecuador, Namibia, Nicaragua,  and Seychelles for 
extension of deadline to implement commitments of Category C provisions and we take note of the 
specific circumstances explained. We support all the extension requests.  
1.47.  The Committee took note  of the notifications under Article  17 and Article 19 and the 
statements made.  
C. Notifications under Article 1:4, 10:4:3, 10:6:2 et 12:2:2 of the Trade Facilitation 
Agreement  
1.48.  The Chair drew the Committee's attention to transparency notifications under Articles 1:4, 
10:4:3, 10:6:2 and 12:2:2 of the TFA. They have the objective of providing transparency, either in 
a broader context – providing information on publication sources – or providing information on th e 
specific items, such as a single window operation, the use of customs brokers, and customs 
cooperation. There were eight notifications under this item.  
1.49.  The first notification was from Ecuador , circulated  in document G/TFA/N/ ECU/2/Add. 1/Rev.2 .  
1.50.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.51.  We thank Ecuador for providing updated links to relevant trade information and enquiry point 
contact information.  
1.52.  The next notification taken up was from the European Union , circulated in document 
G/TFA/N/ EU/1/Add. 1/Rev. 3 and G/TFA/N/EU/1/Rev.8 .  
1.53.  The delegate of the European Union  indicated the following:  
1.54.  The EU has also notified the updates of our trans parency notifications at EU Member State 
level. This notification updates our notification dated 5 May  2021. We would like to recall the 
importance of such information on applied legislation, fees and charges, customs brokers, and 
contact points for Custom s Cooperation.  
1.55.  The EU would like to thank the Members who notified their updates related to import, export, 
and transit procedures, single window, customs brokers and exchange of Customs information, 
notably Ecuador, The Gambia, Jamaica, Nigeria, South Africa and Ukraine.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  1.56.  The delegate of the United St ates indicated the following:  
1.57.  We thank the European Union for updating its information on import, export, and transit 
procedures as well as contact points for their National Transit Coordinator, customs enquiries, and 
customs cooperation, which will be be neficial to all traders.  
1.58.  The Committee then took up the notification from The Gambia , circulated in document 
G/TFA/N/ GMB/2.  
1.59.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.60.  We thank The Gambia for providing enquiry point contact informat ion to respond to questions 
from traders and Governments about import, export, or transit requirements.  
1.61.  The Committee turned to  the notification from Jamaica , circulated  in document 
G/TFA/N/ JAM/3.  
1.62.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the foll owing:   
1.63.  We thank Jamaica for providing information critical for traders seeking to access trade related 
information.  
1.64.  The Committee turned to the notification from Nigeria , circulated  in document 
G/TFA/N/ NGA/3. 
1.65.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.66.  We thank Nigeria for providing information on import, export, and transit procedures, use of 
single window, use of customs brokers, and contact points for enquiries and customs cooperation.  
1.67.  The next notification was from  South Africa , circulated  in document G/TFA/N/ ZAF/2 .  
1.68.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.69.  We thank South Africa for providing information on import, export, and transit procedures, 
use of customs brokers, and contact points for enquiries and customs cooperation. This information 
will be useful to traders.  
1.70.  The next notification was by Tunisia, circulated in document G/TFA/N/TUN/3 . 
1.71.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
1.72.  We thank Tunisia for submitting their trade related information and contact points for customs 
cooperation.  
1.73.  The next notification was from Ukraine, circulated in document G/TFA/N/UKR/3/Rev.2 .  
1.74.  The delegate of Ukraine  indicated the following:  
1.75.  We are thankful for the inclusion of our notification on the agenda and the opportunity to 
present  it today. This notification was prepared together with our colleagues from the State Customs 
Authorities of Ukraine who continue to work and provide stability of the national customs system  
delivering customs services of proper quality despite Russia's fu ll-scale invasion of Ukraine.  
1.76.  The document G/TFA/N/UKR/3/Rev.2  replaces previous transparency notifications submitted 
by Ukraine.  In particular , it provides actual links to where information regarding import, export and 
transit restr ictions or prohibitions, as well as penalty provisions is published . It provides more  
detailed information on the Ukraine single window function  and update s contact information about 
the enquiry point required and import/export transactions.   G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  1.77.  In the face of Russia's war of aggression of Ukraine and its disastrous implications , we would 
like to reassure the WTO Members that the Government of Ukraine will continue to fulfil its 
obligations , including those related to the implementation of TFA.  
1.78.  Ukraine expresses its gratitude to it s international partners for all the support given in 
countering Russia's armed invasion and contributing to the efforts to end this war.  
1.79.  The delegate of Canada  indicated the following:  
1.80.  Canada would like to appreciate all Members who have provided notifications under this  
agenda  item. We greatly appreciate the information they provided , especially from Ukraine , for 
keeping the Committee up to date on trade -related i nformation and contact points.  
1.81.  Ukrainian infrastructure and its people continue to suffer from Russia's illegal , unjustified,  and 
unprovoked invasion which directly impacts Ukraine's ability to participate in WTO work and in the 
international trading syste m. We condemn  Russia's actions and express admiration and respect for 
Ukraine's commitment to the multilateral system and to the WTO.  
1.82.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
1.83.  We thank Ukraine for updating trade -related information and c ontact points for customs 
cooperation.  
1.84.  We continue to condemn Russia 's illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war, disregard for the 
Charter of the United Nations and indifference to the impacts that its war is having on people 
worldwide.  
1.85.  Russia 's actions also contravene the principles and values that are the foundation of the WTO, 
including other Members ' shared notions of fairness and openness.  
1.86.  Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to notify its regulations to the WTO despite the unimaginable 
conditions they face  at home. We commend Ukraine 's commitment to transparency and to this 
organization.  
1.87.  The delegate of Australia  indicated the following:   
1.88.  Australia would like to also thank Ukraine for its update to the Committee here today. We 
acknowledge the challenging ci rcumstances which Ukraine is facing  and impacting on its participation 
in this organization. We also appreciate Ukraine's commitment to WTO transparency . 
1.89.  Australia would also like to join others in reiterating our condemnation of Russia's  illegal 
invasion of Ukraine which is a  gross  violation of international law including the UN Charter. 
We strongly support Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity,  and we call on Russia to cease  
the attacks and withdraw its forces.  
1.90.  The delegate of the European Union indicated the following:  
1.91.  The EU thanks Ukraine for its notification  and particularly in these challenging circumstances . 
The EU joins others in resolute ly condemning Russia's continued aggression in Ukraine. The EU is 
deeply concerned about the global consequences of this war and we urge Russia to stop its 
indiscriminate attacks . We call on Russia  to immediately and unconditionally withdraw its troops and  
military equipment from the entire territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.  
As others have already done, we too commend Ukraine 's unwavering commitment to this 
organization and the multilateral trading system in these difficult times.  
1.92.  The delegate of the United Kingdom  indicated the following:  
1.93.  The UK would like to add its voice of thanks to those Members for their notifications which 
demonstrate their commitment and transparency to the multilateral system. We also note Ukraine's  
commendable efforts to fulfill their commitment to and engagement in this organization despite the G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  constraints  imposed on them by Russia's illegal invasion, we echo the statements of other Members 
in calling on the Russian Federation to end its illegal wa r. 
1.94.  The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
1.95.  Japan appreciates all the notifications, especially the notification from Ukraine, which it 
submitted under the current difficult situation. Japan strongly condemns Russia 's aggression against 
Ukraine and i ts missile attacks against civilian infrastructure and cities across Ukraine. Japan strongly 
urges Russia once again to stop the aggression and withdraw its forces from the territory of Ukraine 
within its internationally recognized borders immediately.  
1.96.  The delegate of Switzerland  indicated the following:  
1.97.  Switzerland thanks all Members and particularly Ukraine for their notifications . Switzerland 
condemns the Russian military aggression on Ukraine in the strongest possible terms. This is a 
serious violation  of international law. Russia's actions violate the provision of the use of force and 
the territorial integrity and sovereignty  of Ukraine as enshrined  in international law. Switzerland calls 
on Russia to respect its international obligations and to revers e its actions as well as to withdraw its 
troops and contribute to de-escalation . Switzerland calls on all actors to respect international law 
including international humanitarian law.  
1.98.  The delegate of the Russian Federation  indicated the following:  
1.99.  It is shameful that WTO Members that just took the floor continue  to make politized 
interventions clearly irrelevant to the mandate of the Committee, wasting delegates ' time and aiming 
to justify their illegitimate  unilateral trade restrictive  measures with extraterritorial effect. Such 
measures are the reason for the break in global supply chains, and increased energy , freight,  and 
insurance costs that led to growing  price l evels across the world. W ide economic repercussions in 
the world could have been avoided if the WTO Members that just took the floor had not breached 
basic WTO obligations . WTO Members can decide themselves how trade facilitatin g these measures 
are. Specif ically, the following measures have been introduced during the past year against Russia : 
implementation of import  tariffs  above MFN rates ; import ban on energy and other products ; 
restrictions and bans on export of various goods ; blocking of financial inst itutions, transportation 
companies, export support agenc ies, and ban on the use of seaports. On top of this list , there is a 
wider  range of  unilateral  measures with extraterritorial effect against individual producers and 
exporters, as well as top manageme nt of producers that undermine global shipment s of vital  
products  for global economy and for global population . All additional costs due to unilateral measures 
are passed  on to consumers , resulting in grow th in global price levels.   
1.100.   The Committee took note of the notifications and of the statements made.  
D. Notifications under Article 22 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement  
1.101.   The Chair drew the Committee's attention to the notifications under Article 22 of the TFA. 
There were three separate  notification obligations identified under Article 22 –Article 22:1, 
notifications by donor Members on their recent capacity building activities; and Articles 22:2 and 
22:3, information on contact points. There were nine notifications.  
1.102.   The first notificatio n was from Canada and circulated in document G/TFA/N/CAN/5 . 
1.103.   The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
1.104.   We thank Canada for providing information on its assistance and support of capacity building 
for 2020 and 2021.  
1.105.   The Committee then turned to the notification from the Democratic Republic of the Congo  
and circulated in document G/TFA/N/ COD/2/Rev.1.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  1.106.   The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
1.107.   We thank the Democratic Republic of the Congo for providing contact information for the 
offices responsible for coordinating trade facilitation related ass istance and support for capacity 
building.  
1.108.   We urge them to complete ratification of the TFA.  
1.109.   The next notification was from the European Union , circulated in document 
G/TFA/N/ EU/2/Add.4 .  
1.110.   The delegate of the European Union indicated the  following:  
1.111.   The EU has updated its notification, made on 16 December 2021, to inform the Members of 
the assistance provided by the EU. The notification contains an update on EU -level assistance 
provided  by country and by region , and bilateral aid from individual EU Member States from 2019 
onwards.  
1.112.   The EU would also like to thank the donor Members assisting developing and least -developed 
countries for their notifications in line with Article 22 of the TFA. 
1.113.   The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:   
1.114.   We thank the European Union for providing the updated information on its assistance and 
support of capacity building.  
1.115.   The next notification was from Myanmar , circulated  in document G/TFA/N/ MMR/4.  
1.116.   The delegate of th e United States  indicated the following:   
1.117.   We want to appreciate Myanmar for providing an update of their contact information.  
1.118.   The Committee took up  the notification s from Nicaragua , circulated  in document 
G/TFA/N/ NIC/2/Rev.1  and from  Nigeria circulated in document G/TFA/N/ NGA/2.  
1.119.   The next notification was from Paraguay  and circulated in document G/TFA/N/ PRY/2/Rev.2 . 
1.120.   The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
1.121.   We thank Paraguay for providing updated contact information for the offices responsible for 
coordinating trade facilitation related assistance and we also share the appreciation with Nicaragua 
and Nigeria . 
1.122.   The Committee took up the  notification from Senegal , circulated  in document 
G/TFA/N/ SEN/2/Rev.1.  
1.123.   The Committee turned to the notification from the United Kingdom , circulated  in document 
G/TFA/N/ GBR/4.  
1.124.   The delegate of the United States  indicated the following :  
1.125.   We thank the United Kingdom for providing information on its assistance and support of 
capacity building projects operational in 2022. We also thank Senegal for updating their contact 
information.  
1.126.   The delegate of Ecuador  indicated the following:  
1.127.   My delegation would like to share a couple of reflections with the Committee. First, the 
arrangements and progress notification require d a high level of coordination with the NTFC. All the 
information provided in this notification was validated by the national  committee. It was an important G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  and detailed evaluation exercise to take stock of  the work which has been completed and that which 
is yet to be carried out. This information  has also  been useful in the preparation of a donor round 
table in Ecuador , which has been delayed d ue to the full schedule of our bilateral negotiations' 
agenda. However, we are making every effort to ensure that this roundtable is carried out shortly. 
We consider  that this notification is an adequate precedent  to request an extension of the 
implementation  deadline. Despite the efforts  we registered in the arrangements and progress 
notification, we have not yet received sufficient assistance,  and this is why we need to again request 
an extension of our definitive dates. Nevertheless , the interest of Ecuador is to move forward with 
the implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement. We believe that in this point , coordination 
with donor cou ntries is key, and sharing experience s between Members dedicated to implementing 
the Agreement can bring positive contributions to the process. Consequently, and  bearing in mind 
the questions we received after our statement at the  dedicated session on tech nical assistance and 
capacity building last year, where we shared  our national experience managing donors , we consider 
it useful to have an informal space to exchange information between Members  that find themselves 
in similar situations . This will allow u s to support each other as well as to learn from each other. If 
there is a nother  Member that considers this  idea a good one, please get in contact  the with 
Ecuadorian delegation so that we can see how we can move forward .  
1.128.   The delegate of Congo  on behalf o f the ACP Group indicated the following:  
1.129.   The ACP Group takes note of the current notifications presented from the ACP members and 
supports their efforts to implement the TFA. We call upon all Members to show flexibility and to 
support the requests that Mem bers have made  for extensions to their implementation dates . 
1.130.   The delegate of Costa Rica  indicated the following:  
1.131.   I would like to thank the Ecuadorian delegation for their suggestion. This is something that 
we take good note of and we will certainly get in  contact with the delegation here in Geneva so that 
we can continue that dialog ue. We think it is a very important suggestion, a valid one above all , for 
countries like Costa Rica which are having similar issues to Ecuador . We think this is a very good 
idea.  
1.132.   The delegate of Canada  indicated the following:  
1.133.   I would like to build on what  the delegate from Ecuador  said. It is a good practice for us to 
start to understand a bit better that one of  the major challenges for Members is going to be finding 
those donors and being able to implement provisions and gaining the experienced practitioners  to 
help in terms of implement ation. Regarding  the benefits of the notification process and the close 
coordination with the NTFC , I think that it is a useful reminder that the hard part is doing a 
notification the first time and then afterwards it gets a lot easier . You can build on what you have 
done in the past. The  notifications  are also very useful pieces of information for us here in the 
Committee but also for our private sectors who trade, who take advantage  of the trade facilitation 
measures that we are putting in place.  
1.134.   The delegate of Paraguay  indicated the following:  
1.135.   My delegation would like to than k the Ecuadorian delegation for the conversation that they 
have brought to our attention. We think it is extremely relevant to be able to share experiences and 
good practices between Members, especially those Members who find it quite challenging, not just  
making notifications but making our category C commitments , as well. So I think it is extremely 
relevant . We take good note of Ecuador's proposal and we are going to contact their delegation as 
well so that we can try to find a space and see what roads we  can take together. I remember last 
year the Committee organized workshops, matchmaking with donors . There were different formats 
for different experience sharing event s, so we can perhaps think about that again .  
1.136.   The Chair indicated the following:  
1.137.   The Com mittee took note of the notifications under Article 22 and of the statements made.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  1.2  Status of Ratification and Notification Process  
i. Update by the WTO Secretariat  
1.138.   The representative of the WTO Secretariat  presented an update since the Committee 
meeting held on 28 -29 November 2022. The presentation is attached as Annex 1 and is also available 
at https://www.tfadatabase.org . 
1.139.   The Committee took note  of the information and the statements made.   
ii. Updates by Members on Overdue Section I and Section II notifications (G/TFA/2, 
para.  9.3(ii)) 
1.140.   The Chair recalled that according to the update provided by the Secretariat, there were  
76 overdue transparency notifications and 21 overdue implementation notifications.  
1.141.   The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
1.142.   For the US delegation, transparency is very important to all of us, especially for traders , for 
understanding what customs formalities are required and providing certainty at the border.  
1.143.   We spend some time working through the database and looking at different Members' 
websites to see what informati on is there and what has been updated. We have thirty -five Members 
that self-identified a definitive implementation deadline prior to this meeting for one of the TFA 
transparency provisions yet they have not submitted the necessary notification to the WTO 
Secretariat.  
1.144.   Each of these Members identified one or more of TFA Articles 1.4, 10.4.3, 10.6.2, and 12.2 
as category A, category B, or category C with a definitive date that has already passed.  
1.145.   Definitive date deadlines are binding, and the United States urges the following Members to 
submit the required information as soon as possible to fulfill these TFA requirement s: Afghanistan; 
Armenia; Bahrain; Benin; Bolivia; Brunei Darussalam; Burkina Fas o; Burundi; Cabo Verde; 
Cameroon; Central African Republic; Chad; Dominica; Djibouti; Fiji; Ghana; Grenada; Guatemala; 
Guinea; Guyana; Jordan; Kuwait; Liberia; Mozambique; Panama; Papua New Guinea; Paraguay; 
Philippines; Qatar; Seychelles; Sierra Leone; So lomon Islands; Uganda; Vanuatu; and Zimbabwe.  
1.146.   The delegate of Canada  indicated the following:  
1.147.   Connecting overdue notifications to the informal session on disaster preparedness held this 
morning, one of the key points in that session was the importance of information and understanding 
of the import processes. In times of crisis you cannot wait for that information to be shared, it has 
to be provided before that since that is what preparedness is all about. Therefore, I would lend my 
voice to the US and enco urage  those delegations that have been read out here that are still behind 
in terms of providing information on transparency that they reach out to the Secretariat who can 
help them to prepar e those notifications and circulate them  to the Committee . By get ting that 
information known , in case of future disaster s the agencies helping out are at least a step ahead in 
that respect.  
1.148.   The Chair indicated the following:  
1.149.   I would like to add that Members need to note that notifications are an obligation and 
therefor e it is important that Members keep up to date with their notifications . The Secretariat is 
always available  to provide guidance and assist with notifications . As Canada mentioned , everyone 
that participated at the workshop this morning acknowledged that it was a very important event . 
We have seen where experience sharing as far as disaster preparedness is concerned serve s as a 
guide to most of us to really get prepared in case of any unforeseen disasters of that nature. Many 
will record that this exercise or event will be a continu ous one as far as the TFA is concerned. 
Therefore , it is important that we do as much as possible to meet our obligations to submit  
notification s to the WTO. Of course , many Members thought that notifications were likely to expose 
themselves  for some other  Member s to begin to harass them, but no , it is a process whereby the G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  Committee  will get to know what Members  are facing so that it can  even help you. It is important 
that we take it  as a way to bring out what we are actually doing and if we are doing something 
wrong, other Members will call our attention to it and Members will be able to correct it. That will 
help us implement the Agreement to the last and that will lead to much bene fit from the Agreement. 
So I urge Members who still have some outstanding notifications, especially the list presented by 
the US , to please do their best to meet the ir notification obligation.  
1.150.   The delegate of Chad indicated the following:  
1.151.   We do agree with  the statements on the importance of notification. It is compulsory to notify  
and we understand the United States and Canada's reaction. It is normal for Members to have to 
notify in order to inform the Committee of the implementation work that has been ca rried out.  
The Committee work is based on this and depend s on the notifications that are submitted to inform 
about  what has been done. It is in this area that we need some capacity building. Chad , along with 
other Members , have difficulties in submitting their necessary notifications. LDC delegations in 
particular have had difficulties in notifying the categories due to the fact that there is insufficient 
knowledge of the TFA itself.  
1.152.   Following ratification it appeared that there was a lack of common understanding of the 
different provisions of this Agreement , including in the private sector. For example, t here are iss ues 
with regard to transit Article 11.2 , that ha s not been complied with, there are still barriers that 
prevent goods from being released in other markets and so eliminating these non -tariff barriers , 
including around SPS and TBT in a more efficient and tr ansparent way is necessary . Technology 
constraints and a lack of awareness -raising is what is preventing an efficient implementation of the 
Agreement in the majority of LDCs. These are LDCs ' difficulties and this is what is preventing us 
from notifying. We  would have liked to provide these notifications but please understand that we 
LCDs have a lot of difficulties in these areas and that is why we need technical assistance to help us 
strengthen  our human capacities first as well as our  institutional capacit ies, which  is extremely 
important to help us to be able to work efficiently and submit these notifications. We would kindly 
ask for further efforts and understanding that it is difficult for us to submit these notifications as we 
need support in preparing them and require technical assistance in this regard. As LDCs, we strove 
to comply with this notification requirement. We agree with Canada and the United States but LDCs 
require further capacity building, human capacities, institutional capacities  in orde r to help our 
colleagues in capital to understand the notification requirements of the TFA because this is in our 
interest . We are in favor of implementing this Agreement as it affects trade but it is just that LDCs  
have specific problems that have been made worse in the current crisis for which we require 
appropriate technical assistance in order to help us face these issues, to rise to the challenge and 
meet our obligations in terms of notifications.  
1.153.   The delegate o f Seychelles  indicated the following:  
1.154.   The Seychelles note s the importance of timely notification and we also acknowledge that we 
are behind with some of our notifications , especially when it comes to the TFA. We would like to 
inform the Committee that las t year the department responsible for notification s faced some staff 
movements so we have very new staff and we are trying to undertake a review of where we stand 
with all notifications. In terms of trade facilitation , we expect to submit the notification of Article 1.4, 
10.4.3, 10.6.2 and 12.2 .2 in the coming days and if, in the internal review that we are conducting , 
we see a need for technical assistance  and capacity building support,  we will inform the Committee.  
1.155.   The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
1.156.   Thank  you to Seychelles for the update on their notification process, we really appreciate it. 
We also appreciate Chad's intervention.  
1.157.   As a Committee all we have from Chad right now is a Category A for the transparency 
notifications an d some notifications on Categories B and C but no technical assistance requests. We 
have not seen any requests for technical assistance yet  and we are very open to requests. We can 
all understand that sometimes it is even difficult to put the category C together in terms of 
sequencing, understanding of what your needs are, coordinating among the other agencies . I think 
Ecuador told us very clearly in their  intervention that this is a large project, requires a large amount 
of work to do the coordination, I a ppreciate that. But there are resources available,  and the G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  WTO Secretariat is one of them . There are many donors in the room . We come to this meeting three 
times a year at least and are open to hearing problems or updates. The worst thing is not hearing 
from anybody  about them. So Members saying even that they are having a problem getting this 
together , can someone help breaks that silence and then we know what the next step is. We have 
heard what Chad said  and we are already taking notes about wh at we can possibly do . We have an 
MOU with the AFCTFA specifically on trade facilitation . We are going to do more work in this area  
and we will plan on being very active this year. I  am trying to bring the threa ds together between 
donors, how they operate,  how you request technical assistance, how to do it effectively and how to 
plan for it. We think that is going to be a big part of our discussions this year and we welcome 
Members' participating and sharing their experiences and joining us in those discuss ions. 
1.158.   The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
1.159.   Japan thanks the Secretariat for the very useful and informative presentation. We also 
appreciate the statements made by the United States, Canada, and Chad on the importance of 
notifications. We very m uch appreciate the update provided by Seychelles and encourage remaining 
notifications to follow suit and explain in the coming meetings the reasons for the delay. We are 
particularly interested to hear about any challenges they are facing, as well as thei r plans to submit 
the delayed notifications.  
1.160.   The delegate of Chad indicated the following:  
1.161.   We would also like to thank the United States for their flexibility. We have taken good note 
of the United States ' willingness  to provide assistance and s upport . When it comes to Members that 
have difficulties , especially LDCs  that have not yet made all necessary notifications , they will not 
now be able to make use of the past flexibilities that they would have been able to use if they did 
not have the challenges. B ut we are very happy to hear the availability  and the openness and 
flexibility expressed by the United States and the other Members and we will certainly come back 
with an expression of our technical assistance need s, and will, of course , discuss with the US . I am 
sure that the other LDCs will come to the Secretariat as well with regard to  request s for technical 
assistance.  
1.162.   The Committee took note  of the information and the statements made.  
1.3  Status of Definitive Implementation Dates  
i. Review of the effectiveness of G/TFA/INF/1/Rev.1 (G/TFA/2, para. 9.2(iv)  
1.163.   The Chair recall ed that G/TFA/INF/1  was created as a useful tool to help Members keep track 
of their implementation dates falling due over the following two years. It is revised on a rol ling basis 
at the start of every year.   
1.164.   The Committee decided that it would review the effectiveness of G/TFA/INF/1  and, "as 
appropriate, improve the list and the methods for circulating it by reflecting feedback from Members, 
in order to promote better self -management by Members of their own implementation status and 
allow adequate monitoring by the Committee".  
1.165.   The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
1.166.   We consider it important for Members to keep track of their deadlines, and for the Committee 
to follo w up on the implementation dates. We think the document helps Members to manage their 
own implementation dates and reminds Members of the deadlines. In this regard, we appreciate that 
all the notifications requesting the extension of deadlines that we revi ewed today were submitted in 
a timely manner.  
1.167.   We encourage Members  whose implementation dates are approaching in the coming 
two years to utilize the document to appropriately manage their schedules, and if they face 
difficulties meeting the deadlines, to n otify the Committee of their request for extension in a timely 
manner in accordance with Article 17.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  1.168.   In this regard, since the document was prepared more than a year ago, we would like to 
propose that the Committee ask the Secretariat to revise the documen t to cover the period from 
1 January 2023 to 31 December 2024.  
1.169.   The delegate of Ecuador  indicated the following:  
1.170.   We would like to highlight the utility of this document. In the particular case of Ecuador it 
was an extremely useful document for us to first work on our commitments and then make the 
request for the extension to the deadlines. We have a suggestion to also include in the document , 
or other resources , the maximum extension deadline possible. We would like to say how useful the 
document is again and thank the Secretariat for its creation and keeping it up to date.  
1.171.   The Committee took note of the information and of the statement made.  
ii. Voluntary Update by Members of Status of Definitive Date Implementation 
(G/TFA/2, para 9.2(vi))  
1.172.   There were no interventions under this item.  
1.173.   This conclude d agenda item 1.  
2  EXPERIENCE SHARING/THEMATIC DISCUSSIONS   
2.1.  This agenda item took place in informal mode .  
2.2.  Members addressed the following issues:  
a) Digitization Of Border Trade Procedures  
b) Improving Procedures For Authorizations Of Exports And Imports Of Processed Food  
c) Advance Rulings  
d) Training Clearing Agents  
e) Trade Facilitatio n Reforms: TFA and Beyond  
3  GOOD PRACTICES AND BUILDING BLOCKS OF SUCCESSFUL NTFCS (G/TFA/2, 
PARA  9.3(V))  
3.1.  The Chair recalled that the drafting of a document containing good practices and building blocks 
of successful National Trade Facilitation Committees ( NTFCs) was another decision arising from the 
TFA Review ( G/TFA/2 , para 9.3 (v)).  
3.2.  Accordingly, the United States ha d circulated a "Proposal On The Six Principles Of Shared 
Practice Of Successful National Trade Facilitation Committees" contained in document G/TFA/W/91 . 
3.3.  The delegate of  the United States  indicated the following:  
3.4.  We are pleased that the paper is now here and w e welcome hearing from Members and working 
with everyone to bring this paper to the next step. Since 2017, Members and international 
organizations have submitted over 25 presentations and papers about National Trade Facilitation 
Committees.  
3.5.  Following revie w, the United States identified key cross -cutting principles shared by most 
successful NTFCs. Three principals were highlighted almost universally among the experience 
sharing  and comprised  high level political support , wide participation and representatio n of all 
agencies, a s well as robust private sector involvement and avenues for input.  
3.6.  Other key principals highlighted in addition  were c ommunication and information sharing 
between government officials and the private sector , clear goals and priorities,  and t racking, 
monitoring, and designation of responsibilities to coordinate NTFC members.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  3.7.  After reflecting on the innumerable interventions made by delegations sharing their experience 
we ask the Committee to consider endorsing these six key principals as shared practices of successful 
NTFCs.  
3.8.  We look forward to hearing other Members ' thoughts a nd look forward to the Committee 's 
decision.  
3.9.  The delegate of the European Union  indicated the following:  
3.10.  The EU would like to thank the US for its communication on good practices and the building 
blocks of a successful NTFCS. From a customs viewpoint as w ell as from a general assessment of 
the US recommendations, the EU supports this communication and therefore can endorse the 
six principles as shared practices of successful NTFCs.  
3.11.  The delegate of Hong Kong, China  indicated the following:  
3.12.  Hong Kong, China  would like to thank the US for the communication and the suggestions 
contained therein. While we are studying them in detail  we would like to seek clarification on 
two points. First, we are interested to know if the six principles mentioned in para. 5.2 a re intended 
to be non -binding. This question is from a systemic point of view because the TFA does not stipulate 
any requirements on how NTFCs should operate. And second, for two of the principles namely 
number 4 and number 6 it seems to us that the exact meaning of these two principles is not very 
clear. We are wondering if some elaboration would be beneficial.  
3.13.  The delegate of India indicated the following:  
3.14.  We would like to thank United States for this very interesting submission. At this stage , capital 
colleagues are looking at this submission and we will revert with those comments. India has a very 
active and empowered, inclusive and effective NTFC and , evidently , as stated in the paper the six 
principles appear relevant but we would reflect on  it after receiving comment s from capital.  
3.15.  The delegate of Ecuador  indicated the following:  
3.16.  We would also like to thank the United States for presenting  this document that was 
announced  already in the past . We are very happy to now be able to analyse it.  It is still being 
review ed in capital and especially our NTFC is having a look at it . This document encapsulates a lot 
of information that Ecuador also shared in this Committee and we attribute a lot of value to this . 
On the basis of our experience , we th ink that the political support and broad input from the private 
sector and different national bodies is of key importance . Looking at the other principles , we will also 
be interested in listening to the comments of the other Members as well, especially whe n you look 
at the concept of this proposal as well as hearing different recommendations . The NTFCs are going 
to have to analyse the document and we will have to know a little bit more about how the US sees 
the next steps that can be taken with regard to th is document.  
3.17.  The delegate of the United Kingdom  indicated the following:  
3.18.  The UK would also like to thank the United States for presenting this proposal to the 
Committee. NTFCs are a crucial part of the TFA infrastructure for ensuring ambitious and sustai nable 
trade facilitation reforms , and this paper is a great reminder of the value of experience sharing within 
this Committee. The UK will consider this in greater detail in the coming weeks but the proposed 
principles all are very sensible to us. One addi tional suggestion we might have would be to include 
a reference to the importance of a NTFC Secretariat. It would link well with principle six on tracking, 
monitoring and responsibility and underline the importance of people in realizing TFA 
implementation , including ensuring Chairs and Secretariat have the capability, support and tools 
they need . Finally , we would like to highlight that support is available for WTO Members and NTFC 
Secretariats in the form of training and tools, such as provided by UNCTAD under the UK's Accelerate  
Trade Facilitation Programme, as an example.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  3.19.  The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
3.20.  Japan thanks the United States for its communication and the explanation. We recognize the 
importance of the NTFC as it plays important roles in domestic coordination and the implementation 
of the TFA. We consider that the six principles put forward by the  United States are the keys for a 
successful NTFC, and welcome the proposal.  
3.21.  The delegate of Singapore  indicated the following:  
3.22.  We would like to join other Members in thanking the United States for its proposal. We see 
that the six principles that have b een highlighted are quite aligned with similar recommendations 
from the WCO study of NTFCs and UNCTAD's sustainability score matrix for NTFCs. We believe that 
some of these six principles could have further elaboration for clarity , similarly to what our co lleague 
from Hong Kong, China has asked for . We thought that the suggestion s made by the United Kingdom 
were quite valid and could be incorporated into the six principles. We look forward to continue 
working with the United States and interested Members on  these six principles.  
3.23.  The delegate of Congo  speaking on behalf of the ACP Group indicated the following:  
3.24.  The ACP Group takes note of the statement made by the United States and will continue 
reviewing this proposal . We would like to be able to discuss i t further going forward.  
3.25.  The delegate of Chinese Taipei  indicated the following:  
3.26.  We would like to thank the United States for their proposal which  helps to identify 
cross-cutting principles and to promote more dynamic and responsive NTFC practices and fu nctions. 
These  principles as shared practices of successfu l NTFCs outlined in this communication include 
many valuable elements to realize the spirit of the TFA. The proposal is pragmatic and useful . 
Some Members might need more time to look  at it carefull y. We look forward to hearing that 
Members' NTFC mechanism s can implement their  functions and realize the goal of trade facilitation.  
3.27.  The delegate of Canada  indicated the following:  
3.28.  Thanks to the US for circulating the paper. While this is a US paper, le t us all remember that 
we have decided as a Committee to come up with these principles. We have actually elucidated the 
first three in our four -year review in para. 9.3  of G/TFA/2 , so the document is just to build on the 
spirit of what we are trying to do. Secondly, in terms of the process going forward , I have heard a 
few comments that it would be useful for you Chair to have some informal sessions to work on how 
we further elaborate  the content of what the U S has provided to the Committee and turn it into an 
actual Committee document or Committee  decision . I think that further informal sessions will be 
required in the coming months but I think that what the US has provided for us here is a good start.  
3.29.  The del egate of Switzerland  indicated the following:  
3.30.  I would like to join others in thanking the US for their efforts in collecting all this information 
and putting it into one paper. We are currently having a look at it in more detail but we are definitely 
also ready and looking forward to work with the US and others on this in more detail.  
3.31.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
3.32.  I would like to thank all the Members for their support and their very thoughtful comments. 
We appreciate the forwardness  of the EU, Japan and Chinese Taipei, it is really appreciated. Just to 
address a few things. Canada  is right, we did agree to this in the four -year review and this was the 
US taking the opportunity of trying to gather what we have heard over the l ast five years and put it 
into some coherent next step  because we have so much rich information that has been shared with 
us over the years about lessons learned, some of the monitoring and tracking activities and how 
others are gathering  information about  how to quantify the changes they have made as they have 
implemented TFA . It would be a real shame if we could not take this information and do something 
with it , take it another step forward in helping us learn  as we still have , as the Secretariat showed 
yesterday, hundreds of articles still to be implemented. If we take what we have shared to the next 
step that will not only help Members as they continue to implement , it will help the technical 
assistance providers to further hone in on  their technical assistance and capacity building to better 
help them when they provide c ategory  C technical assistance and capacity building  support .  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  3.33.  This was our first attempt to capture all that information -sharing in a coherent way and of 
course it co mes from the green light from the four -year review to do this work. We have no intention 
of changing the Agreement or interpreting the Agreement. What we are trying to do is say the 
Committee is the place where technical work on the TFA is being done and t hese are discussions we 
have had and we think that we as a Committee  agreed to. This is of course the first step . We would 
be very interested in participating in an informal session . We know we started the paper but there 
really is no reason that it belong s to us, it belongs to all of us in the Committee and I think it can be 
expanded on if that is what other Members want. I think we just balance moving forward providing 
enough principles with making sure we do  not get so specific that we have created a neg otiation 
where none is necessary because it is a non -binding document that is just supposed to provide help 
and support moving forward.  
3.34.  The Chair indicated the following:  
3.35.  Thank you the United States for this wonderful work on this proposal and your kind response 
to the comments by Members. I agree with you that it is time that we move to the next step with 
experience sharing so that we can concretise the actions by various NTFCs. At the last meeting we 
had an opportunity to hear a presentation from the regional trade facilitation committees so these 
are some of the themes that we have to collate and then see what step s we can take to  help. It will 
also encourage the donors b ecause most of these trade facilitation activities were being supported 
by donors and they need to see positive next steps . Therefore , I agree that we can continue working 
on this , and as suggested by Canada,  we continue with informal discussions to ensure that we move 
forward and that these proposals are considered , while confirming that the document  has no binding 
commitments .  
3.36.  The Committee took note  of the information and the statement made.  
3.37.  That concluded  agenda item 3.  
4  PROMOTING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF WTO TRADE FACILITATION AGREEMENT 
THROUGH DIGITAL REVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENCE TECHNOLOGIES – COMMUNICATION 
FROM CHINA (G/TFA/W/90)  
4.1.  The Chair indicated the following:   
4.2.  Following up on its presentation to the Committee at its autumn meet ing last year, China has 
circulated a communication entitled "Promoting the Implementation of WTO Trade Facilitation 
Agreement through Digital Revolution and Intelligence Technologies" in document G/TFA/W/90 . 
4.3.  The delegate of China  indicated the following:   
4.4.  Based on our experience sharing and recommendation o f the past Committee meetings we 
bring this topic of promoting the implementation of the TFA  through Digital Revolution and 
Intelligence in Technologies as a formal communication.  
4.5.  My presentation includes four parts . First, I would like to show you two pictures. The first one 
is an oil painting of 19th century. In the painting we can see two workers laying cables as a postman 
passing on a horse and the second picture is a photo of the Fifth Avenue of New York in the year 
1900. We can see that the avenue was dominated by carriages. I show these two pictures  because 
everyone can note that telephones took the place of postmen and cars took the place of carriages, 
so the two pictures tell us that it is only a matter of time before new technologies replace traditional 
methods. The only way forward is to embrace the new technology because it is coming.  
4.6.  The COVID -19 pandemic not only profoundly change s the trade environment in the area of 
global value chain  but also forces  us to rethink the implementation of the TFA and how to digitalize 
trade, improve  scientific and technological  empowerment and promote connectivity through smart 
approaches. The comprehensive and high quality implementation of the TFA  is of positive 
significance in effectively dealing with major emergencies , promoting economic recovery and 
enhancing the resilience  and the safety of supply chain s. G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  4.7.  At the same time , disruptive technologies such as digitalization, big data, smart algorithms and  
block-chain are profoundly changing the pattern and way of international trade , presenting new 
opportunities and challenges to implementation of the TFA. It is important to take the opportunities 
to utilize the new generation of intelligence technology. B y using it, we can actively carry out 
institutional innovation, improve the quality of control and administration of customs and other 
border agencies  so as to upgrade the transparency and predictability of the business environment 
for cross border trade.  
4.8.  How to apply intelligence technology so that we can improve the quality of TFA implementation 
through the construction of Smart Customs, Smart Border, Smart Connectivity ? Based on the SMART  
mechanism and driven by the advanced technologies, the smart custo ms, smart borders and smart 
connectivity is to promote the customs institutions, innovation, smart supervision, border control 
and measurement and customs cooperation so as to enhance global trade security and trade 
facilitation.  
4.9.  In relation to the TFA , the technology comes down to six Articles .  
4.10.  For A rticle 1 Publication and Accessibility of Information , we suggest ed two points : (i) to 
accelerate digitalization of trade information  and (ii) to establish and maintain "online" and "offline" 
enquiry points . For Article 7 Release of Goods and Customs Clearance , we suggest ed three points : 
(i) to allow traders to declare goods in advance through electronic data interchange ; (ii) to adopt AR 
(Augmented Reality), AI (Artificial Intelligence), Big Data and other a dvanced technologies ; and 
(iii) to promote customs and other border agencies to connect with traders by intelligence 
technology . These two articles relate to smart customs.  
4.11.  For Article 8 Border Agency Cooperation, we suggested two points : (i) to coordinat e and 
optimize border supervision functions , and (ii) to strengthen cooperation among Members who share 
common borders by means of information technology.  For Article 10 Formalities Connected with 
Importation, Exportation and Transit , we suggest ed to encou rage the harmonization of data 
elements and data processing among Members as far as possible by adopting international 
standards , and to expand the range of the adoption of single window" used in customs clearance 
processes besides declaration of goods and  conveyances. These two Articles relat e to smart borders.  
4.12.  For Article 11 Freedom of Transit, we suggest ed two points : (i) to use electronic systems for 
transit procedures and (ii) to adopt ICT (information and communications technology) tools.  
For Article 12 Customs Cooperation, we suggest ed to strengthen the intelligent inter -connectivity 
and cooperation among customs through electronic means. These two articles relat e to smart 
connectivity . The details can be  found in our communication  (G/TFA/W/90 ). 
4.13.  So how to narrow the digital divide ? Based on two considerations we suggest that the 
Committee stimulate discussion and encourage Members to exchange their experiences  and best 
practices as well as challenges. Promoting the implementation of the TFA th rough institutional 
innovation driven by digital and intelligence technologies should be one of the prioritized areas for 
technical assistance and capacity building support.  
4.14.  I would like to highlight two points. Our communication does not mean to add oblig ations to 
the TFA, it is just a way to help Members to implement the TFA and it is aimed to establish a platform 
to share experience  and best practices as well as challenges so as to promote implementation of the 
TFA. The EU, US, Japan, Korea, Georgia and other Members have applied intelligence technologies 
in customs and border management. As we heard  yesterday and today, the US, Honduras and India 
have also given good examples of using intelligence technologies. Also, since the start of the 3S 
concept, China customs has launched nearly 83 international cooperation projects nation -wide. We 
can use the platform to share all the experience s as it is good to exchange this experience and share 
best practices.  
4.15.  We know that holding a global workshop on promoting digitalization and the implementation 
of SMART  border management agencies for trade facilitation and narrowing the digital divide  has 
been listed in the 2023 TFAF workplan. We can take this opportunity to discuss the related to pics in 
this year's workshops . G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  4.16.  We are happy  to answer any question, comments and suggestions and we hope that Members 
can support this communication.  
4.17.  The delegate of Kyrgyz Republic  indicated the following:  
4.18.  The Kyrgyz Republic would like to thank the Chinese delegation for the communication on 
promoting the implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement through digital revolution 
and intelligence technologies.  
4.19.  Trade facilitation, simplification, modernization and harmonization of export and import  
procedures is a vital issue for the Kyrgyz Republic as a small and landlocked country and has been 
a subject of discussions raised by the Kyrgyz Republic on the WTO platform.  
4.20.  The Kyrgyz Republic is bearing high expectations for the vitality of the TFA Agr eement which 
entails quite efficient mechanisms to facilitate and increase global trade by offering efficient 
provisions for expediting the movement, release and clearance of goods, including goods in transit. 
It also sets out measures for effective cooper ation between customs and other appropriate 
authorities on trade facilitation and customs compliance issues.  
4.21.  In this respect, the Kyrgyz Republic fully supports the communication from China on  the idea 
of the necessity of comprehensive and high -quality im plementation of the TFA which should be 
enhanced with the new technologies such as digitalization, Big Data, smart algorithms and other 
innovative technological tools.  
4.22.  The document proposed by China entails very effective and timely  propositions on introduction 
of the smart technologies across very important aspects of the TFA such as reaching higher 
transparency through publication and accessibility of information, rele ase of goods and customs 
clearance, border agency cooperation, freedom of transit and customs cooperation.  
4.23.  It should be noted that the Customs authorities of the Kyrgyz Republic are currently on the 
verge of major reforms and reorientation of principles i n the implementation of its activities.  
4.24.  In particular, at this stage, as a part of the implementation of activities defined by the Concept 
of the Kyrgyz Republic 's Customs Service, the Kyrgyz Government is trying to simplify trade 
procedures and improve t he efficiency of customs administration in the movement of goods and 
vehicles through the checkpoints, to ensure transparency at all levels of customs operations, 
innovative tools for monitoring and analysis of business processes carried out at the check p oints as 
well as tools for information exchange with partner countries.  
4.25.  Following the implementation of the Concept, the Kyrgyz Republic wants to change the way 
the customs authorities operate, by optimizing customs operations and creating a modern 
inform ation system that will allow the administration of customs processes and make key decisions 
automatically based on the results of analytical tools. To date, work has already begun on the 
development of a new information system, new mechanisms for fixing an d controlling the movement 
of vehicles, and laying the groundwork for the transition to a completely paperless technology.  
4.26.  It should be noted that along with the activities carried out within the framework of the 
digitalization of customs administration, work on the reconstruction and improvement of the 
infrastructure of checkpoints is being carried out. During the preparation of the basic principles and 
directions of the customs system reform in the Kyrgyz Republic, we studied the best international 
practices of the introduction and use of information systems in customs affairs . In this regard, we 
are positively looking to the achievements reached by the General Administration of Customs of the 
People's Republic of China in the application of advanced tech nologies and the improvement and 
development of customs administration.  
4.27.  Taking into account the rich experience of the Chinese side in trade facilitation and measures 
to automate customs administration, as well as given the fact that there is a long -stand ing 
cooperation between our services, the Kyrgyz Republic expresses its interest in joining the "3S 
Concept " and to consider the application of this initiative at the checkpoints between the Kyrgyz 
Republic and the People's Republic of China.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  4.28.  We are confi dent that this will greatly reflect the provisions of the TFA and make a significant 
contribution to the development of international trade between our countries.  
4.29.  The delegate of Congo  speaking on behalf of the ACP Group indicated the following:  
4.30.  The ACP group would like to thank China for their communication . The ACP group is currently 
examining the proposal , looking at the difference in development between Members and regions and 
particularly the difficulty encountered by developing Members  and the LDCs. It is essential for 
Members to exchange experiences and good practices. This will allow for the facilitation of the 
implementation of the TFA. 
4.31.  The delegate of Mongolia  indicated the fol lowing:  
4.32.  Mongolia thanks the delegation of China for introducing this agenda item. New technologies 
are changing the pattern of international trade as we observe it for the last couple of years . 
Therefore , my delegation believes that we should seize the ne w opportunities created by the 
development of technology for the benefit of the international community and wellbeing of humanity. 
In the context of international trade , we believe that trade facilitation could be one of the most 
appropriate areas where expansion  of new generation intelligence technology could be significant 
and contribute  to better implementation of the TFA. In this regard , my delegation supports the 
proposal and wish es to co-sponsor the communication G/TFA/W/90 .  
4.33.  The delegate of the Russian Federation  indicated the following:  
4.34.  Russia welcomes the communication from China promoting the implementation of the TFA 
through digital evolution and intelligence technologies. Although it was circulated quite recently and 
hence it is still under review in my capital , at a first glance many ideas set forth in the document 
are quite appealing  to us. Discussions, exchange of experience sharing, best practices as well as 
challenges on the issues indicated in the paper will reinforce the overall function of t he TFC. 
Experience sharing and thematic discussions are currently part of the Committee meetings and in 
this regard we note a number of very interesting presentations made today and yesterday. However, 
if the Committee want s to have a focus on the topic of  digitalization, on top of the workshop 
suggested by China, alternatively we might consider holding one or a series of workshops depending 
on Members' appetite for stand -alone dedicated thematic sessions on digital evolution and 
intelligence technologies in customs matters.  
4.35.  The delegate of India indicated the following:  
Thank you China for the presentation to highlight how to create smart customs, smart borders, 
smart co nnectivity. The use of technology for trade facilitation  objectives cannot  be overstated. 
While we continue to review this submission with interest , the suggestions made for stimulating 
discussions  through  experience sharing sessions is useful. I have two specific questions : (1) what 
has been China's experience particularly on information exchange relating to goods with other 
Member countries under Article s 8 and 12 ? Has China signed up  to any MOU or voluntar ily offered 
any such  information exchange? ; (2) I t is mentioned in the paper regarding the promotion of 
customs and border agencies directly connecting traders with enterprise s' ERP systems for capital 
flow (Article 7 ). What has been China's experience in this regard?  
4.36.  The delegate of El Salvador  indicate d the following:  
4.37.  El Salvador thanks  the Chinese delegation for the presentation of this initiative , and for 
contacting  our delegation. We are currently analysing the proposal in capital  but have  some 
preliminary comments. Many of the elements in the prese ntation and in the proposal are already 
part of our domestic  efforts  to proceed  with the modernization of our customs system. The objective 
is to have and  automated  system that is safe, integrated, interoperative and accessible. 
The digitalization  of customs documents and the use of electronic means in trade operations is a 
priority for our country. A number of the customs services are already available online. This speeds 
up procedures and reduces processing times . We consider that w ithin this Committee , we can share 
our experiences and best practices at an international level , on the use of new technologies which 
contribute to the simplification and harmonization of customs procedures and systems as well as 
border checks. New informa tion and communication technologies are  essential element s to promote G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  development  and innovation  of customs  procedures. We would like to thank China again for bringing 
this topic to the attention of the Committee and we hope to be able to furnish more comm ents on 
this initiative at the next meeting of the Committee.  
4.38.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
4.39.  We thank China for encouraging experience sharing on the important topic of how Members 
face the opportunities and challenges posed by  digitalization.  
4.40.  We agree that the TFA provides a framework to continue progress in the areas of 
communication, automation, and collaboration for not only Members implementing the TFA but also 
Members as they continue digitalization efforts.  
4.41.  Transparency i s good. We agree that transparent and accessible trade -related information 
available online is key to facilitating cross -border trade. Online publication of trade -related 
information is especially important for SMEs and first -time exporters as well as acce ss to enquiry 
points that can address questions they have , especially in times of disaster . The ability for Members 
to communicate timely information to traders is imperative to ensuring the continuation of supply 
chains.  
4.42.  We support digitalization. We cont inue to promote in the WTO and other multilateral 
organizations digitalization of border procedures moving away from paper -based clearance 
processes and supporting advances in automation. The TFA provides the framework to ensure border 
agency cooperation i n automation efforts, including streamlining customs formalities, acceptance of 
electronic documents, acceptance of e -signatures, and continued development of a single window 
for traders to submit trade -related information.   
4.43.  We balance that with the need t o protect confidential business information. Digitalization also 
brings challenges for Members. As Members become responsible for more data, we encourage the 
continued discussion on what information is necessary for Members to collect, ensuring Members 
follow TFA Article 10.1 focusing on facilitating trade through rapid release and clearance of goods 
while reducing the time and costs for traders. Members must also consider how they will protect the 
data and create a trusted environment for traders to share that data. We encourage a continued 
dialog ue among Member s, not only on automation efforts but protecting confidential business 
information as the world trading system continues to evolve from paper to data.  
4.44.  The presentation was great and it is a good introduction or highlight of what was in the 
communication but how  do we take this forward, what is the next step that China envisages in this 
process ? We would not run from this conversation, we embrace the conve rsion on digitalization and 
all the aspects, the challenges, priorities, but even within the paper we could probably have a few 
lengthy conversations just on each one of the bullet points  when we really get into it. I do think that 
is the work that is made  for this Committee to do. This is the real work that we welcome  but how 
and what does China foresee. How do we take this conversation forward?  
4.45.  The delegate of Singapore  indicated the following:  
4.46.  We thank China for its paper and we agree that it could be beneficial for Members to exchange 
experiences on the use of digital and intelligence technologies in the implementation of the TFA. 
Singapore looks forward to working further with China and other interested Members to conduct  
such discussions.  
4.47.  The delega te of the European Union  indicated the following:  
4.48.  The EU would like to thank China for its presentation today and we welcome this 
communication . We will need more time to carefully analyse it and come back with detailed 
comments. Overall, the EU notes tha t the communication is very much focused on trade facilitation, 
with an emphasis on IT, single window, and data processing -areas where the EU is also actively 
engaging.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  4.49.  While facilitating legitimate trade is a laudable aim it should not be taken in isolation insofar 
as customs activities are concerned . There also needs to be a balance with efficient and effective 
customs controls.  
4.50.  There are also several concepts that are not immediately clear, such as offline inquiry points, 
fingertip services, e -payment of customs duties, and the use of augmented reality, to name just a 
few. We will be happy to continue the discussion on the topic with China.  
4.51.  The delegate of Ecuador  indicated the following:  
4.52.  We thank China for the presentation and the circulation of this document. We are currently 
analysing the document in capital. We are very interested in seeing how these conversations can 
move forward , especially the idea of having a platform to share experiences, good practices , and 
challenges , as well as holding a workshop this year. We would like to better understand how we can 
create synergies or strengthen the efforts currently in place for the implementation of the TFA 
through the use of new technologies.  
4.53.  The delegate of Egypt  indicated the following:  
4.54.  We than k China for the presentation and for the submission which is being analysed in capital . 
The presentation shows the importance of technologies and digital transformation for the 
implementation of the various articles and obligations within the framework of the TFA. We are 
aware of the importance of transferring  technology to developing countries so that they can benefit 
from the commercial and development dimension of this Agreement. Therefore , we are willing to 
cooperate and maybe discuss further with China  on how to benefit from their experience in that 
regard. I call on Members who can do so to share their experience in the field of technology transfer 
related to the implementation of this Agreement and to share their experience on framework 
agreements or assistance programmes in transferring  technology to developing and least developed 
countries, especially relating to smart customs and smart borders.  
4.55.  The representative of the World Customs Organization  indicated the following:  
4.56.  I would like to highlight the two WCO/WTO joint publications on Disruptive Technologies.  
4.57.  In 2021, the WCO and the WTO partnered in trying to identify the current state of play in 
implementing three groups of technologies that were promising to be extremely  useful in Customs 
and border procedures in the future. These technologies are: Blockchain and distributed ledger 
technologies; Internet of Things; and Big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.  
4.58.  To collect this information, the WCO and WTO put together a set of 18 survey questions. 
Then these questions were distributed to Customs Administrations as a Chapter of the WCO Annual 
Consolidated Survey in 2021. The results of this survey has been compiled into the WCO -WTO joint 
paper on "Role of Advanced Technologies in Cross Border Trade; A Customs Perspective ". 
4.59.  The main objective of this paper was to gain a better understanding of how Customs, as a 
key stakeholder in international trade, can further contribute to trade facilitation, throug h the use 
of disruptive technologies. The joint paper included the information on level of implementation, 
benefits and challenges, Members ' case studies. The paper is available in three languages on the 
WCO and WTO websites.  
4.60.  I would also like to mention another joint work of the WCO and WTO on Disruptive 
Technologies. Namely, the "WCO/WTO Study Report on Disruptive Technologies 2022 ". The Study 
report was originally published in June 2019. And in 2022, we updated the Study Report jointly with 
the WTO to i nclude the broader international trade component. The results of the WCO Annual 
Consolidated Survey as well as the recommendations and lessons learnt from WCO 's regional 
workshops and virtual WCO technology conferences have been reflected in this updated S tudy 
Report.  
4.61.  It focuses on seven different technologies namely blockchain and distributed ledger 
technology; Internet of Things; big data, data analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning; 
biometrics; drones; virtual, augmented and mixed reali ty; and 3D printing.  The report includes 42 G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  case studies from Members, the private sector and academia. It also provides recommendations and 
lessons learnt since 2019, as well as WCO and WTO initiatives in this area, and much more. 
The Updated Report was j ointly launched by the WCO and WTO in October  2022 and it is now 
available in three languages on the WCO and WTO websites.  
4.62.  The WCO is ready to provide further details on key findings of this joint report at the upcoming 
meetings of the CTF. 
4.63.  The delegate of  Canada  indicated the following:  
4.64.  I would like to thank China for this detailed and specific paper. I appreciate the things that 
they have highlighted and which we have been hearing a lot about in this Committee over the years. 
I thought I would take a ste p back for a second and rather than focusing specifically on this aspect 
alone, I would like to suggest that perhaps it would be useful for us in the coming months, to think 
a little more o n this aspect as part of a larger picture that the Committee is fac ing for the coming 
years.  
4.65.  In the first instance , we are going to hear later today a couple of presentations on how the 
TFA has helped decrease  trade costs . We have also heard in a number of the experience sharing 
that have been provided today and in the p ast, these two aspects of the TFA have succeeded so far 
from what we can see. We heard yesterday morning that implementation of the TFA and even going 
further has helped in the context of disasters and preparedness for disasters and allowing for 
continued trade when the situation was not really conducive  to that. So the benefits of the TFA are 
starting , if not already , to become even more clear to us from the work that has happened in this 
Committee over the years.  
4.66.  By the same token , we are also hearing in  the Committee the difficulties that Members are 
having in terms of implementing  the TFA. The requests for extension s that are happening are also 
an indication that there is perhaps more need for a larger holistic look at what the Committee can 
do. I think  China's paper is one contribution to it but there are a few other contributions I think that 
may be considered going forward if the Committee is interested . What I am suggesting is that rather 
than focusing on one specific thing we start to take a number of different ideas that Members have 
brought forward . One idea I have is to include a paper that Canada has also co -sponsored around 
supporting the timely and efficient release of global goods through accelerated implementation of 
the TFA. There are a lot of similarities in that paper to China's paper. Canada's suggestion is when 
we do come back to this topic that we start to take things together and see if we can address  them 
all together rather than piecemeal aspects.  
4.67.  The delegate of China  indicat ed the following:  
4.68.  Thank you to all the Members for giving a very positive support to our communication and for 
the kind comments and questions. First , to answer the Indian colleague on the experience o f how 
we exchange data with some Members . When we want  to exchange data with other customs we use 
an MOU. For example , regarding the AEO  programme , we have signed over 20 MOU s with other 
Members. With some Members we use an automatic exchange,  for example , for the China -EU AEO 
we established a system  to autom atically exchange data with the EU. We also have MOUs with 
Members on other areas in addition to AEO programme. Maybe with some smaller countries we 
exchange the data  through email.  We would like to improve our way of exchang ing data. With regard 
to the US questions, we would like to encourage Members to use these innovati ve technologies 
because now it can only become a trend . We cannot ignore the trend so what we can do is embrace 
it and use it and study how to make use of these tech nologies. We encourage Members to share 
their experiences, challenges and best practices during  this Committee. We can set up maybe a 
standing  agenda item for this topic because these technologies will change our traditional way very 
much . Therefore, our initiative is  to establish a platform, to exchange experiences and then we can 
see what we can do. I appreciate Canada's opinion that the Committee is not just focusing on the 
TFA itself because  benefits of the implementation  will go beyond the TFA . So, if we work together to 
bring all the practices together then we can find ways to not only facilitate trade but also to deal 
with the  natural  disasters . I think that this needs all of us to work together. Regarding the EU's 
question , that maybe some concept s in the paper are  very simple but it is not clear, that is why I 
ask Members to join together to polish this communication and work together and clarify each G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 24 - 
 
  concept . We can make it better . Our aim is that most Members can support this communication . 
Thank y ou all for t he kind comments and suggestions from other Members and WCO.  
4.69.  The Chair indicated the following:  
4.70.  I thank you very much for this presentation. I would like to thank you for these proposals to 
the Committee . I know that every Member of the Committee  is interest ed to see a rapid promotion 
of the digitalization of the TFA procedures . As stated by Members , digitalizing the customs 
procedures will help rapidly in promoti ng the implementation of the TFA.  
4.71.  Your presentation has further highlighted what needs to be done in terms of promoting the 
implementation through digitalization and technologies . I commend your encouragement to 
Members who have the capacity or even those who do not have the capacity to try to engage  on 
that, so that the implement ation of the TFA will be 100% successful by all Members.  
4.72.  The Committee took note of the presentation and of the statements made.  
4.73.  That conclude d agenda Item 4 . 
5  REQUEST BY THE UNITED STATES REGARDING INDONESIA'S CUSTOMS PROCEDURES 
FOR INTANGIBLE  PRODUCTS  
5.1.  The Chair recalled that i tem 5 is a request by the United States regarding Indonesia's customs 
procedures for intangible products.  
5.2.  The delegate of  the United States  indicated the following:  
5.3.  The United States is very concerned with Indonesian regulation 190 /PMK.04/2022 of 
14 December 2022, entitled "The Transfer of Self -Consumed Goods."  
5.4.  This regulation attempts to make intangible goods subject to a customs operation, including 
through procedural requirements and Chapter 99 of the Indonesian tariff schedule. The regulation 
states it will be enforced through customs audit procedures.  
5.5.  Our first question is how Indonesia determined that these intangibles are "goods." In the 
United  States, our courts have taken the position that intangible products, such as softwa re or an 
app, ultimately a structured data sequence, cannot be considered a "good." This question of course 
was raised in the context of examining whether this type of data, is a "good" for purposes of 
importation and the tariff schedule (HTSUS  - Harmonize d Tariff Schedule of the United States ). They 
determined this type of data is not a good in any reasonable understanding of the word "good."  
5.6.  Can Indonesia share its legislation and public facing document explaining how it determined 
that the same type of data is a "good" for purposes of Indonesian law, and its tariff schedule.   
5.7.  Our second question relates to these tariff lines. Indonesia is a party to the HSC at the WCO, 
as is the United States. While, these is no international agreement as to the nomencla ture in 
Chapter  99, Article 3(1)(a)(ii) of that Convention, requires that each Contracting Member apply the 
General Rules of Interpretation in its implementation. Therefore, we request Indonesia explain how 
it applied GRI 1 to this data, to determine the c lassification in either tariff line since GRI 1 requires 
that goods be classified according to their "essential character." It is our understanding that the very 
nature of this data is "1s" and "0s." We would like to know how Indonesia has determined that the 
GRIs and specifically GRI 1 would lead an importer to utilize these tariff lines.  
5.8.  Switching gears to other questions about the treatment of this type of data, software, as an 
"imported good," we recall the title and language of the relevant regulation,  "transfer of 
self-consumed goods." We have researched the publicly available material on Indonesia's notified 
single window and government websites and cannot locate any definition of what "self -consumed" 
means. Can you please point us to a government mea sure that provides the public with the 
necessary information to understand this definition and its full scope?  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  5.9.  Further to these fundamental questions is how any importer or potential importer, would know 
it is an importer and whether the content it is acce ssing originates inside or outside of the territory 
where they reside? The language of the regulation would include any user of a smart phone or 
computer.  
5.10.  The simple fact is that software, whether as an operating system or an app, is everywhere 
and a daily  part of almost every citizen's life.  Every single person that has a smart phone, has 
updates, enhancements, and bug fixes transmitted to their devices on a daily basis. How could a 
person maintain records for each bug fix, update to an app, phone or lapto p? 
5.11.  According to a simple internet search we found that the number of smartphone users in 
Indonesia is estimated to reach 210.77 million users in 2021. Currently, Indonesia is the 
fourth -largest smartphone market worldwide after China, India and the United States. In 2018, the 
subscriber count for telecommunications provider Telkomsel amounted to 163 million.  
5.12.  We note the regulation requires registration and compliance with the local customs port or 
location. How does a person comply with this requirement? D oes that mean all 210 million 
smartphone users must make contact with their local customs office?   
5.13.  We note that Indonesia notified Article 7.5, customs audit, as a category  A. We would be 
interested in how Indonesia will use customs audit to enforce the re gulation at issue. We are 
interested in reviewing Indonesia's customs audit and documentation retention requirements.  
5.14.  Looking to Article 2 of the TFA, we would request information about how Indonesia consulted 
with traders and the public about this new reg ulation. Was a notice -and-comment period provided? 
Were consultations held with interested parties, from software developers, app developers, IT 
companies, and the users and consumers of such products, which of course is as least over 
210 million? We would  appreciate any understanding of those efforts and what was discussed.  
5.15.  We have a number of other questions for Indonesia in regards to TFA Articles 6.3.2 on Penalty 
Disciplines,  10.1.1 on formalities and documentation requirements, and GATT Article III, wh ich we 
have included in our written questions.  
5.16.  We know we have put forth a great number of questions for Indonesia. But we hope it shows 
our deep concerns, and reflects the great upheaval this regulation has created with our stakeholders.   
5.17.  Because of the enormous impact this regulation is already having and will have on millions of 
people, we request that Indonesia voluntarily put this regulation in abeyance, and not implement or 
enforce regulation 190/PMK.04/2022 until Indonesia can supply answer s to the many questions 
around this regulation.   
5.18.  We have provid ed questions in written form to Indonesia through the TF Committee and 
intend to raise this issue within the WTO and outside the WTO. We look forward to receiving 
Indonesia's replies.   
5.19.  The delegate of Indonesia  indicated the following:  
5.20.  We thank the US for its great concern on our regulation and we duly take note of the concerns 
that you have put forward  orally and written . We appreciate greatly the approach the US has taken 
both in Geneva and in capital  and also in the process of interest  on our regulation . With regard to 
the question from the US delegation, Indonesia can reiterate that the Ministry of Finance Regulation 
No. 190 of 2022 currently regulates the administrative requirements for import s of digital 
transmission. This regulate s and help s people notify imports of digital goods or software. Before 
Indonesia issued this regulation on how people should notify, Indonesia already had import data of 
software or digital goods from many companies which translate s into a data where we have imports 
using Chapter 99 that have been made even before the issuance of the Ministry of Finance regulation 
No. 190 of 2022 . Therefore , the Government of Indonesia issued this regulation to provide certainty 
on how to declare software imports to customs officers with simplified documents without the 
obligation to declare shipment information as there is no shipment process. Furthermore, f or all 
software and also for all other digital goods transmitted electronically tariff is still 0% , therefore the 
Ministry of Finance regulation No. 190 of 2022 published on 14 December has not changed in terms 
of policy and still maintain s the zero percen t tariff in accordance with the WTO Ministerial Declaration 
on Monitorium on import duties.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  5.21.  Regarding the scope of intangible goods or digital goods, Indonesia would like to also reiterate 
that digital goods are any intangible goods in the form of electron ic or digital information including 
both goods that are the result o f conversion or embodiment at least in the form of software, 
multimedia, or electronic data. Indonesia has issued a specific tariff heading for th ese digital goods 
in Chapter 99  - headings  99.09 in the Indonesian Customs Tariff Book. So far, Indonesia imposes 
most favoured nation MFN tariff of zero percent on software and other digital  goods transmitted 
electronically under heading HS 99.19 which consists of five tariff lines, namely operat ing system 
software HS code 9901.10.00, application software HS 9901.20.00, multimedia HS 9901.30.00, 
supporting or driver data HS 9901.40.00 and other software and digital products HS 9901.90.00. 
However, software and other  electronically transmitted digi tal goods referred  to in the heading 99.01 
are those that are not associated with machines or devices that ha ve been or will be imported. 
Software and other electronically transmitted digital goods that are associated with machines or 
devices that have bee n or will be imported are classified with such machines or devices. On that 
note, Indonesia does not intend to violate WTO rules and remains open to further questions and 
queries from the United States and the floor.  
5.22.  The delegate of Canada  indicated the fo llowing:  
5.23.  Canada does share many of the concerns raised by the United States. We appreciate 
Indonesia's comment here today that they do not intend to apply tariffs in line with the Ministerial 
commitment no t to impose customs duties on electronic transmiss ions and we would hope that they 
would continue in that respect and we appreciate some of the further explanations and we look 
forward to further conversations on this to get clarity as to exactly how this is supposed to operate. 
The US has raised a number  of operational concerns and questions that do call into the question 
how this actually will work.   
5.24.  The delegate of Chinese Taipei  indicated the following:  
5.25.  I want to thank the United States for bringing up this proposal and Indonesia's comments. 
We share the United States' concerns with regard to the matter and wish to raise the same points 
in principle. The US request specifies the critical point of whether intangibles can be considered as 
goods. Under the framework of t he Trade Facilitation Agreement , goods are  the subject of transport, 
inspection, detention, confiscation, release , refusal  of entry, or post clearance audit . We are 
interested to know how the transactions of intangibles can be adapted to this trade scenario and can 
be managed by  the customs. We find it worth exploring whether the purchase of intangibles through 
electronic transmission is an act of importation and whether the importer is obliged to declare it to 
the customs. We are also curious to know what is the scope of customs  control and authority over 
intangibles transactions, how does any potential importer know that it is an importer and how 
Indonesia will use customs audit to enforce the regulation at issue. We look forward to Indonesia's 
provision of relevant information on the new regulation for Members' reference.  
5.26.  The delegate of Switzerland  indicated the following:  
5.27.  Switzerland would like to thank the United States for putting this issue on the agenda and for 
submitting questions. Like others , we follow this issue with interest and concern. We thank Indonesia 
for their remarks today and we look forward to understanding better the current practice and future 
plans of the Indonesian authorities and its interaction with applicable WTO rules.  
5.28.  The delegate of Singapore  indica ted the following:  
5.29.  We thank the US for raising this agenda item. We are similarly monitoring Indonesia's 
regulation No. 109/PMK.04/2022 with interest. The US have raised pertinent questions regarding 
the operations  of this regulation and we would appreciate further clarification from Indonesia 
regarding the measure.  
5.30.  The delegate of the European Union  indicated the followin g:  
5.31.  The EU would also like to thank the US for bringing this issue to the attention of the 
Committee. We also share the concerns raised. We do appreciate the feedback received from 
Indonesia and are interested in being kept informed.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  5.32.  The delegate of the United Kingdom  indicated the following:  
5.33.  The UK would also like to thank the US for raising this and we are also interested to hear 
more detail from Indonesia on their regulation.  
5.34.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
5.35.  I would like to t hank all the Members for their support and interest in the issue we have raised 
today. I do thank Indonesia for responding to our intervention and we look forward to responses to 
our written questions. I would just like to take one more moment to express t hat I am quite 
flummoxed by the regulation and the conversation because when we look at the regulation it is 
irrelevant to me when I am sitting in the TF Committee as to whether there is a tariff on it or not. 
It is not my cause for concern, my cause for c oncern is that we are in the TF Committee and we 
have taken commitments on our customs operations , specially  customs audit , reducing formalities , 
release of goods, and consulting with traders . We are constantly talking about those customs 
operations and as  you can see from the questions , I cannot understand how it reasonably can mix 
intangibles which is just data , with Customs service. It seems to me completely inadministrable  in 
any sense of the word for customs to have a responsibility through audit to monitor downloads and 
apps because no matter how you slice this , a smartphone is a computer and it is constantly sending 
updates and software updates to your phon e. And every t ime you use an app you are downloading 
data and every time  you access Tik Tok and you watch a m eme or create a meme  you are creating 
software .  
5.36.  There is a reason in the tariff code that books and periodicals are valued by their weight not 
by ad valorem, be cause you cannot put a value on a periodical . How would you put a value on a 
self-published manuscript  versus  something from a New York Times bestseller ? So what was 
determined through the tariff schedule decades ago was to just mesure the weight of paper because 
there are some things that do  not lend themselves to putting a value on th em. The connection I am 
making here is that there seem s to be this perception that I can value and I can create a system 
where I can make companies tell me what software they  download for their telecommunication 
system or a movie or a video and I can do that in isolation of the fact that Tik Tok and memes are 
the same exact thing , they have zero value and are done millions of times a day by millions of 
smartphone users in Indo nesia. How would we ever know where they originate in terms of country 
of origin, how would it be d ocument ed?  
5.37.  The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
5.38.  Japan thanks the United States for raising this issue. We also want to raise our considerable 
concern regarding whether Indonesia has an intention to actually impose customs duties on 
intangible products or whether Indonesia intends to withdraw its commitment to the 
WTO Moratorium on Customs Duties on Electronic Transmissions, so we ap preciate the explanation 
made by Indonesia today. We continue to watch this issue closely with considerable concern.  
5.39.  The Committee took note of the information and of the statement s made.  
6  IMPROVEMENTS TO THE FUNCTIONING OF THE CTG SUBSIDIARY BODIES  
A. Report  by the Chair of the Committee on Trade Facilitation to the Council for Trade 
in Goods on the Current Functioning of the Committee on Trade Facilitation 
(G/TFA/W/88)  
6.1.  The Chair indicated the following:  
6.2.  Members will recall that the Council for Trade in Goods  held an informal meeting to continue 
discussing CTG -related MC12 implementation matters on 31 January last. At that meeting, I 
presented the main highlights of my report concerning the current functioning of the Committee 
(WTO document G/L/1474 , G/TFA/W/88 ). The Secretar iat also presented a "comparison matrix" 
which seeks to provide a general overview of the main elements of the reports prepared by the 
14 subsidiary bodies.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 28 - 
 
  6.3.  In his closing statements at the informal meeting on 31 January, the CTG Chair stated that 
there w as "common understanding that each committee is free to organize its work as it sees fit. 
And it is up to each committee to decide the way in which they would like to improve their 
functioning, taking into account the interests of Members".  
6.4.  I have also re ceived on 9 March 2023 a letter from the Chairperson of the CTG requesting 
Chairs of subsidiary bodies that we organize, in the context of formal or informal meetings of the 
Committee, discussions concerning its functioning.  
6.5.  Such discussions would allow M embers to identify possible areas of improvement. 
The Chairperson of the CTG also requested that, at a later stage, the Committee submit a written 
report to the CTG describing the discussions held and the improvements introduced. Such report 
shall have to be submitted for consideration at the last formal meeting of the CTG, which is 
tentatively scheduled to take place on 30 November 2023.  
B. Functioning of the CTG and its Subsidiary Bodies - Communication from Argentina, 
Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay  – JOB/TF/232/Rev.1  
6.6.  The delegate of Colombia  indicated the following:  
6.7.  The delegation of Colombia thanks the support received for the inclusion of this agenda item. 
On behalf of the co -sponsors, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay , and Uruguay, we thank 
Members for the opportunity of presenting this document.  
6.8.  Document JOB/TF/232/Rev.1  was prepared on the basis of the matrix presented  by the 
Secretariat at the Council for Trade in Goods ( G/C/W/824 ), which includes the reports sub mitted by 
its 14 subsidiary bodies. It identifies the challenges facing the functioning of the CTG and its 
subsidiary bodies, especially in processing the large volume of information arising from formal, 
informal , and thematic meetings.  
6.9.  These challenges al so hinder the work of delegations, especially those with human resource 
constraints, and hinder the progress of the Organization based upon consensus. For this reason, the 
proposed work aims to generate a c ommon dialogue between the different subsidiary bo dies to bring 
their practices closer together, avoiding the risk of increasing disparity in their operational processes.  
6.10.  Among the areas of action and specific suggestions that we put to consideration are: Meeting 
planning: Annual programming and automatic  alarm mechanism; Assistance to delegates: Written 
Manual of the functioning of the Committee and introductory sessions for new delegates; Formal 
meetings: Manual of Style in order to reduce the disparity of formats, contents of documents, other 
processes;  and possible improvements to the minutes/reports; Informal meetings: Alignment with 
formal meetings ( convening notices , agendas, etc.); circulation of the written report well in advance; 
Thematic sessions: Encourage their use in formal meetings; Digital t ools: eRegistration – review, 
adjustments and wide use; facilitate the inclusion of capital delegates; eAgenda and the like – 
analysis of possible implementation; Online notification system – analysis of possible 
implementation; Trade Concerns Database . 
6.11.  Similarly, this exercise recognizes the particularities of each case, so it invites each 
Committee, based on its own dynamics, to define what suggestions are useful to analyze their 
potential implementation or improvement.  
6.12.  At the end of the document there is a summary table where all the suggestions are listed - 
with references to the paragraphs of the document where they are detailed - and, in turn, aligned 
with their respective areas of action and the challenges they seek to address.  
6.13.  To conclude, we  know that the organization is witnessing times of reflection and review of its 
operational dynamics, in terms of the substantive discussions that must be held, in addition to the 
approaches and exercises that are being carried out to improve the working p rocedures of the 
committees, strengthen coordination and communication between the various instances and 
facilitate dialogue and participation of the countries. That is why the proponents are presenting this  
proposal, stressing that the spirit of process f acilitation, which is the heart of this Committee, is also 
the cornerstone of the proposal.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 29 - 
 
  6.14.  The delegate of Ecuador  indicated the following:  
6.15.  We support Colombia's statement. We recognize that this Committee works very well. 
However, we are always looking  to harmonize processes in a cross -cutting matter with other 
committees and subsidiary bodies within the CTG. We do not want to find ourselves in a situation 
where for all of our best inten tions to try and improve the work in each committee , we end up 
widening the divide  in terms of working methods. We are very to answering any questions that 
Members might have on our proposal.  
6.16.  The delegate of Paraguay  indicated the following:  
6.17.  My delegation would like to join and thank Colombia for presenting this documen t which we  
co-sponsor. This contribution is brought with the idea of generating a common dialog ue within the 
subsidiary bodies to harmonize their practices and to avoid disparity in terms of the working 
methods. The Committee works extremely well , and we  feel supported by the  Committee and the 
Secretariat. The idea behind the document is to try and br ing the good practices from other 
committees that could be used here.  
6.18.  We understand that the Committee is different and has its own specificities . The suggestion 
is that, considering its own dynamic, the Committee could use suggestions from the document if 
they consider that they are useful to implement in the future. At the end of the document there is 
table summarizing the  suggestions made, with references to where further details are provided in 
the document, such as  areas of action  and challenges  they seek to address . Our interest is to listen 
to other Members  and collectively improve our work.  
6.19.  To conclude , in a constructive spirit,  we invite Members to analyse the document with a 
holistic perspective  - looking at the entire forest and not just the trees. In practice , the situation is 
different between those who need to deal with just one tree and those who need to walk through 
the entire forest without having a clear path before them. This can be confusing and frustrating, 
particularly when you have to  deliver results at the end of the day.  
6.20.  The delegate of Congo  speaking on behalf of the ACP Group indicated the following:  
6.21.  The ACP group welcomes the Chair's report and welcomes the discussion of the working 
methods of the Committee. The report reflects the work that Members have carried out within the 
Committee. We also take note of the docume nt presented by Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, 
Paraguay and Uruguay.  
6.22.  The delegate of Mozambique , on behalf of the LDC Group, indicated the following:  
6.23.  The LDC Group complements you on your report found in G/TFA/W/88 . Regarding the 
functioning of the subsidiary bodies of the CTG , including the TF Committee , the LDC Group draws 
Members ' attention to our revised submission on WTO reform , document JOB/GC/223/Rev.1 , dated 
22 April 2023 . In that submission , we introduced our views on a practical approach that could be 
taken now to improve the function ing of WTO bodies across the Organization in a manner that would 
assist LDCs.  
6.24.  We applaud the Market Access  Division and the Chairs for working  to improve the func tioning 
of the CTG bodies and the CTG. On your section of the report concerning agendas and meetings , the 
LDC Group highlights the need for annotated agendas and for effort by WTO bodies  not to rem ain in 
silos and to ensure against overlapping meetings whe re LDCs must be active. The information on 
the turnaround time for minutes is useful. However, the meeting report s mentioned in paragraph 
235 after the meetings are held are very much appreciated. LDCs have requested summary meeting 
notes.  
6.25.  The delegate of  the United Kingdom  indicated the following:  
6.26.  We think this discussion on committee functioning is important and it is very helpful to have 
it on the agenda today. The UK does not think that committees across the WTO all need to harmonize  
as committees  are all slightly different. However, different committees should be taking inspiration 
from each other on what is helpful and what could make them more user -friendly. We think this G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 30 - 
 
  Committee functions really well, partly due to actions taken as part of th e four -year review. Chairs 
and the Secretariat are great to work with and clearly are committed to making this a forum that 
delivers maximum impact. Other committees could be taking inspiration from this one.  
6.27.  Turning to the administrative side , the UK wou ld like thank Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, 
Paraguay, and Uruguay for their submission. We also want to again thank the LDC Group for their 
practical ideas put forward in JOB/GC/223/Rev.1  which also gave an explanation of the importance 
of making t he WTO system more inclusive. The UK views this discussion through the lense of 
efficiency and inclusivity because the easier and more inclusive the system is to interact with , the 
more we all benefit from the considered input from more delegations includi ng our LDC partners. So 
despite the high functionality of this body it is helpful to consider if any further improvements can 
be made and we are especially interested in the views of those smaller delegations.  
6.28.  On training and assistance for small delegati ons, new and existing delegations, the UK always 
supports the provision of online training accessible to both Geneva and capital -based delegations , 
including introductory session in a hybrid format. We also support capacity building  sessions focused 
on sup porting delegations with notification submissions and linked to that , as we have said in other 
fora, the UK supports the proposal in the LDC submission around creating a notification portal that 
could serve as a single window for notifications including fo r the TF A.  
6.29.  On harmonization of digital tools, we see real potential in harmonization. As the UK has said 
across other committees , we would welcome more proactive use of the existing interactive  meetings 
calendar, this could act as a hub for every meeting with all the documents digitally available. The  CTF 
already uses that tool to good effect . Additionally , we might consider uploading some extra material 
under the meetings to help delegations to prepare for upcoming meetings and reflect on previous 
meeting s. For example, we welcome that the TF Secretariat makes efforts to ensure that all 
Secret ariat oral reports, presentations and documents are uploaded in advance to the platform. 
Other committees can take inspiration from you here. After the meetings we wo uld welcome if the 
minutes could be uploaded under that relevant meeting after they have been circulated and uploaded 
to WTO docs online. That would be helpful as it would mean that when preparing for the following 
meeting, delegations could easily check b ack to the whole content of the previous meeting and what 
had happened. The TF secretariat  already hyperlinks many documents within agendas and airgrams 
and that is great  - again an area where you are ahead of the curve. The UK would welcome if all 
WTO doc uments referred to within agendas and airgrams, including notifications could be directly 
hyperlinked to the relevant page on WTO documents online.  
6.30.  On scheduling and planning meetings , we acknowledge there are real capacity and scheduling 
challenges acros s the WTO and as noted in the two submissions, rescheduling causes  real issues for 
delegations with capacity constraints. Across the WTO we would like to see all meetings set well in 
advance both so that delegations have time to prepare and also to support the Secretariat in locking 
in the weeks prior to really focus sol ely on the preparation of the minutes, the minutes are one of 
the Secretariat's most important functions which are core to capacity building and technical 
assistance.  
6.31.  Finally to conclude , a final point on process. Within this Committee and across the broa der 
discussions the UK thinks we do not need to wrap these improvements in layers of complicated 
process. It feels to us like some of the ideas  floating around can be actioned easily without major 
resource or budgetary implications so the UK would be happy  to empower the CTF Chair working 
with the Secretariat when this Committee has general agreement around any sensible tweaks  that 
could help especially our LDC partners and others with capacity constraints to interface with the 
Committee.  
6.32.  The delegate of Israel indicated the following:  
6.33.  Israel would like to thank Argentina;  Colombia;  Ecuador;  Paraguay;  and Uruguay for their 
submission. We agree with the challenges identified in section 2.2 of the paper , including difficulties 
in being able to actively parti cipate in meetings, a lack of detailed knowledge about the regular work 
of each committee , challenges in identifying counterparts at other missions, accessing statements , 
and following up on trade concerns. The consequences of these impediments are more pr onounced 
in small delegations so we would welcome the implementation of practices that facilitate ability to 
actively engage in committee work.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 31 - 
 
  6.34.  In this respect , we support the solutions proposed in the paper , namely the annual planning 
of meetings and hav ing a written manual  like that of the SPS Committee which outlines regular 
activities and notification procedures. We also concur with the idea of holding an introductory session 
for each committee. Alternatively a pre -recorded introductory tutorial for ea ch committee would be 
resourceful. At this juncture  ,it is important to express our gratitude to the Secretariat for its ongoing 
work to support delegations and to stress that the implementation of the solutions in this paper does 
not entail reinventing th e wheel. The WTO is reple te with resources , whether in the form of databases 
or other digital tools , but there remains a need to streamline procedures across committees and 
integrate techni ques that allow Members to effectively harness  information in order  to forge ahead 
with the development of multilateral outcomes.  
6.35.  The delegate of Singapore  indicated the following:  
6.36.  We would like to thank you , Chair,  for your report on the functioning of the Committee. With 
reference to the CTG m atrix, we agree with our UK counterpart  that this Committee has been 
functioning relatively well although there are some areas for improvements including a timely 
circulation of meeting material such as a genda and meeting minutes. We have been hearing 
Members around the room on the suggestion for an annotated agenda and we fully support that. 
We also support some of the suggestions on the use of digital tools and harmonization of their use. 
We agree with the UK that some of the procedural suggestions could be ado pted by the Chairperson 
and the Secretariat without too many  challenges. May we encourage the Chair to open up the process 
for Members to submit proposals and we can perhaps review the rules of procedures of the 
Committee in an informal  setting. On a more complicated process such as harmonization of digital 
tools, we would recommend that it could be done at CTG level or across the Organization on how to 
harmonize with other committees as well.  
6.37.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
6.38.  I would like to thank the delegations of Argentina;  Colombia;  Ecuador;  Paraguay;  and 
Uruguay for this thoughtful and very relevant proposal.  
6.39.  It causes me confus ion. I know it went to the CTG and we spoke at the CTG, so I will repeat 
that some of the proposals that we see in here , we think belong in the CTG. We think that a lot of 
the issues that have to do with automation and databases are bigger than even the CTG, they are 
WTO-wide and belong at the G eneral Council . Very specific questions like the u se of e -Agenda and 
how your notifications should look is a question for each individual committee so we still believe that 
most of the ideas administratively fall into three buckets  - either CTG specific, WTO specific or 
subsidiary bodies.  
6.40.  If the delegati ons will be making a proposal to the CTF listing the number of issues they would 
like the Committee to discuss and possibly take onboard then I do  not have to intervene on issues 
that do not belong in this subsidiary body. For example, with regard to formatting notifications, how 
is that done when there is a  checklist of issues for the Customs Valuation Agreement and the TFA 
requires Section 1 and Section 2 notifications , and TBT has a compl etely different notification 
requirement. I do  not know how to harmonize those . We are perfectly willing to discuss each one of 
these issues in the Committee  but I am not sure how to respond to this document because I am not 
sure what you are proposing  this Committee do. However, the US is very interested in it  and it is 
very relevant.  
6.41.  The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
6.42.  Japan appreciates the communication from Argentina;  Colombia;  Ecuador;  Paraguay;  and 
Uruguay  as it proposes constructive appr oaches to reduce the burden o n small delegations.  
6.43.  Considering the large number of meetings and the technicalities of the discussions of the CTG 
subsidiary bodies, we think it  is important for the functioning of committees to ensure that all 
delegations ha ve sufficient information and knowledge when joining the WTO meetings.   G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 32 - 
 
  6.44.  The delegate of Canada  indicated the following:  
6.45.  This discussion started in the CTG at the end of January. In the conversation there was very 
much an openness to improving the functioning of the CTG and its subsidiary bodies and to try to 
find ways to do so. There was a strong recognition that not all Councils operate in the same way 
and so it was fairly clear that it would be up to Cou ncils to decide on what they wanted to do. 
But there was also a number of commonalities across  bodies, for example , when the agenda is 
issued, whether or not annotated agendas could be useful, and any reporting that comes out of the 
meeting . There are some  common aspects to the operation of the Council and each of its subsidiary 
bodies that I think a number of delegations recognized.  
6.46.  At that meeting there was also an expression of discomfort with taking a coordinated 
approach , and rather a preference that each of the subsidiary bodies conduct their own examination 
of their own operations . So that it is how Canada is approaching this discussion here. We  as the 
Trade Facilitation Committee  are going to exam our operation, we hope that a process will start 
soon. I think there has been a number of good recommendations or suggestions here from some 
Members in terms of ways to improve the operation of the Committee. I think that it does actually 
operate quite well but there are some areas where improvement could b e made and I would suggest 
that going forward we use at least as a guide  the matrix that was circulated by the CTG, that records 
all of the information that each of the subsidiary bodies provided. It does not necessarily need to be 
the only reference point , because I think the paper today provides some additional thought and  
ideas. I think the matrix is a good jumping off point that we can use going forward.  
6.47.  In terms of that, what I would suggest is building a bit on the experience in the CTG but also 
the experience in the Market Access Committee . The TRIM s Committee and the A griculture 
Committee are also taking a similar approach. Members are being asked to submit some ideas  and 
suggestions that the Secretariat can compile . Whether we use the matrix catego ries as a jumping -
off point or if we want to take some inspiration from what the CTG itself has done because they have 
circulated something in the last week, it would be useful for Members to submit their ideas,  for the  
Secretariat to compile them and then  circulate them . We could have an informal meeting at some 
point in the coming weeks to talk about the ideas that the delegates here in the CTF believe are 
worthy of consideration by the Committee itself for changes in the way we operate.  
6.48.  The delegate of the European Union  indicated the following:  
6.49.  The EU would like to thank Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay for their 
communication on the functioning of the CTG and its subsidiary bodies. We agree with others that 
this Committee already works very well but we recognize that further i mprovements are always 
welcome. The EU supports most of the recommendations proposed, notably those relating to:  
planning of the meetings , including annual planning and automatic alerts ; introductory sessions as 
assistance to delegates. The EU would like t o add that training materials should be available online 
for GVA and capital -based  delegates, and possibly information material for external stakeholders ; 
and a ctions proposed for the E -Registration tool and trade concerns database . 
6.50.  We understand the objec tive of the manual mentioned under Section 5.1 is to promote more 
consistent practices, and we are open to discussing this further.  Regarding Informal Meetings 
(section 6.1) , the EU is of the view that informal procedures should be kept more flexible.  
6.51.  The delegate of Colombia  indicated the following:  
6.52.  I thank delegations that have taken the floor regarding the document that we submitted 
together with the delegations of Argentina;  Ecuador;  Paraguay;  and Uruguay. This shows a collective 
interest in  having an organization that is more and more operational. We also thank the Secretariat 
for its usual excellent work and celerity, and you Chair.  
6.53.  The Chair indicated the following:  
6.54.  I would like to thank delegations for sharing their views. As suggested by the CTG C hair, the 
Committee may want to continue to discuss this issue in formal and informal mode before it submits 
a report to the CTG for consideration at its meeting of 30 November 2023.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 33 - 
 
  6.55.  Based on what I have heard, I believe that I have sufficient information  to compile a draft list 
of proposed improvements to the functioning of the Committee. I will circulate the list to the 
Committee with a three-week period for textual input. The incoming Chair may wish to use the 
revised list as a basis for further discuss ions in the Committee.  
6.56.  That concluded  agenda i tem 6. 
7  RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC IN THE COMMITTEE ON TRADE FACILITATION  
A. Report by the Chair of the Committee on Trade Facilitation to the Council for Trade 
in Goods on the Committee's Work in Response to the Pandemic – G/TFA/W/89  
7.1.  The Chair indicated the following :  
7.2.  The second element of CTG -related MC12 implementation matters that I reported on to the 
CTG informal meeting on 31 January was my report on the Trade Facilitation Committee's response 
to the Pandemic, WTO document G/L/1475 , G/TFA/W/89 . The major action of the Committee was 
the compendium of trade facilitation measures implemented by WTO Me mbers and observers in 
response to COVID -19, as presented to the TF Committee in WTO document G/TFA/W/40 . 
The intention of the Committee was that the document would be a repository of best practices.  
7.3.  In the context of the Committee's response to the pandemic, I am very pleased to welcome a 
presentation from the United Kingdom on the lessons they learned from COVI D-19 with regard to 
trade facilitation.  
B. Trade Facilitation during a Crisis: Lessons Learned from COVID -19 – Presentation by 
the United Kingdom  
7.4.  The delegate of the United Kingdom  indicated the following:  
7.5.  As we all know, the C OVID -19 pandemic presented a major challenge to global trade and 
economic growth, and trade facilitation has played an essential role in mitigating its impact, ensuring 
the movement of critical goods.  
7.6.  The UK implemented various measures to facilitate trade during the pande mic, including 
providing greater flexibilities to certain customs processes, accepting electronic versions of 
paper -based documentation, and sharing new information about requirements online.  
7.7.  The UK recently undertook an exercise to consider the lessons l earned from implementing 
these measures and presented these to our NTFC in February 2023, where we asked for feedback 
from our NTFC members.  
7.8.  To start, I  will provide some context before diving into the measures the UK took. I think the 
challenges of movin g goods during the pandemic are already well documented, so I do  not intend 
to spend much time going over these, but the disruptions in global supply chains, primarily due to 
the lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed, led to cancelled flights, reduced logistics capacity, 
and port and border closures, causing significant delays and increased costs. The surge in urgent 
demand for critical goods further exacerbated the issue of supply chain disruption.  
7.9.  The pandemic also led to a shortage of workers in the  logistics industry. Strict health and safety 
measures such as quarantine and social distancing were introduced to reduce close contact between 
individuals and limit the spread of the virus. This meant that there was a decrease of the availability 
of trans port methods to move goods, but also a need to adapt processes which were reliant on a 
physical presence.  
7.10.  To mitigate the impacts of these challenges, the UK 's response from a trade facilitation 
perspective can be grouped into four areas. This presentatio n is not attempting to give a 
comprehensive view of all the measures taken during the pandemic to facilitate trade, rather, we  
have selected a few important examples to highlight the significance of the TFA in our response.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 34 - 
 
  7.11.  Firstly, the UK Government prov ided support for businesses through key worker exemptions 
and online guidance. In the UK, a key worker was defined as someone whose work was critical to 
the COVID -19 response including those who work in health and social care and in other key sectors, 
including methods of transport through which supply chains pass.  
7.12.  The swift movement of critical goods through dedicated clearance routes were essential to 
ensuring that goods arrived in a timely manner and to ensure their shelf life was maintained 
throughout t he process.  
7.13.  Temporary flexibilities with regards to the release and clearance of goods were introduced to 
mitigate the delays at the border due to the strict health and safety measures introduced and the 
disruption to transport.  
7.14.  And lastly, the UK accele rated implementation of trade facilitation reforms through 
digitalisation of documentation to reduce physical interactions between the people involved in 
moving goods.  
7.15.  As we all know, Article 1 ensures that a Member 's customs and border procedures are 
transparent, publicly available, and uniform, and the value of this provision was highlighted during 
the pandemic.  
7.16.  Before the pandemic hit, we had all our guidance in one place on a well -established and 
user-friendly gov ernment  website , therefore it was easy  to add the latest information and direct 
traders to the updated webpages. Providing this information in a timely manner meant that traders 
could  stay abreast of changes to guidance and easily access the information they need to keep goods 
moving. At a tim e when the rapid pace of change meant that verbal messaging of quite complex 
changes to customs and border processes could be quite easily misunderstood or misconstrued, 
being able to communicate these changes in this way was hugely beneficial.  
7.17.  In the UK we also introduced new measures to help us more easily identify which goods to 
subject to duty reliefs, including a 4 -digit statistical codes which we used on top of our commodity 
codes to define our COVID -19 critical products. We then applied Value Added Tax and import duty 
reliefs to these goods to reduce the cost of importing goods essential for combatting C OVID -19. 
Again, disseminating this important information to traders was vital in order to mak e sure that 
traders could make use of these available to ols and maximi ze the benefits available to them.   
7.18.  Since the introduction of the UK 's electronic system for customs declarations in the late 90s, 
the UK has made significant progress digiti zing customs formalities to reduce the burden on 
legitimate trade at  the border. Nevertheless, during the pandemic we adapted our procedures to 
give more flexibility to authori zed traders. In the UK, businesses must be authorised by HMRC before 
they can use most trade facilitations. We prioritized the simplification of cus toms authorizations 
during the pandemic by permitting applications to be sent to HMRC via email, without the immediate 
need for a wet signature and granting additional flexibilities to extending customs authorizations.  
7.19.  The UK introduced special procedures which allowed for faster clearance through the ports for 
critical goods, including processing customs documentation ahead of vehicles departing from 
supplier warehouses to minimi ze delays at ports.  
7.20.  This meant that we were able to minimi ze disruption for UK  traders, and speed up the process 
at a time when  supply chains were greatly disrupted, with the ambition of preventing loss or 
deterioration of critical perishable goods.  
7.21.  Moving on to Article 10 of the TFA, which for the purposes of this presentation, I  am going to 
focus specifically on enabling electronic versions of documentation in order to minimi ze burdens in 
relation to customs formalities.  
7.22.  As I just mentioned, we have accepted electronic customs declarations since the 1990s, but 
the pandemic present ed an opportunity to accelerate the digitali zation of some documents which 
were still reliant on a paper -based approach.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  7.23.  We accepted digital versions of documents, issued digital stamps, or extended the validity of 
documents including Certificates of Origi n, transit documents, phytosanitary certificates, and ATA 
Carnets. During C OVID  we reached an agreement with partner countries to accept digital copies of 
Certificates of Origin issued by our issuing associations. This enabled traders in exporting countries 
to not need to worry about getting original certificates from officials, whic h may have significantly 
reduced the need for physical interactions at the border, at a time whe n lots of staff were working 
from home due to the pandemic, This not only helped to reduce the risk of virus transmission, but 
it also helped to streamline the process, making it faster and more efficient. These measures 
provided much needed flexibility to traders at a time whe n constantly changing restrictions meant 
that goods, paperwork, and the people needed to verify the paperwork, could not predictably be in  
the same place at the same time.  
7.24.  The C OVID -19 pandemic also highlighted the need to enhance supply chain resilience and so 
now I'll briefly discuss three key areas of work that we  have taken forward in order to increase 
supply chain resilience, and these are very much informed from the lessons learned from the 
pandemic. The first area is around building insight and visibility. It goes without saying that supply 
chains are incredibly complex. So supply chain transparency and visibility are essential if this  is 
something that we are going to improve our resilience on in the longer term. Therefore, one of the 
key things we are focusing on is to build insights and analysis to improve Government's 
understanding and visibility of the UK's critical supply chains.   
7.25.  The other area is around making use of the data that government has access to, such as 
import data, and we  have designed dashboards to analyse individual goods to support Government, 
looking at new ways to identify and assess our resilience. In addition t o the data , we are also 
developing new capabilities like stress testing to see what impact it would have on business and 
government and what action we might need to take. Analytical capability has been a key area of 
focus and with this embedded now as part  of our core function in our trade department, we can be 
more on the front foot and be looking ahead.   
7.26.  We have also developed and published a supply chain resilience framework  that sets out 
improving supply chain resilience and the actions that can be unde rtaken by Government as well as 
business. And we have  worked with the Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure to develop 
a toolkit for businesses that reflects the pillars we've outlined in the resilience framework.  
7.27.  The final pillar of our work i s working internationally and we  are doing a lot of work with our 
international partners and supply chains, bilaterally and multilaterally. The UK is collaborating with 
international partners, including the G7, on economic resilience cooperation and suppor ting efforts 
to boost supply chain resilience as a mechanism to underpin global economic security.  
7.28.  In February of this year we gathered feedback from the members of our National Trade 
Facilitation Committee for their reflections on the implementation of th ese measures . We held a 
roundtable discussion and had a presentation from the International Chamber of Shipping.  
7.29.  Our stakeholders raised the importance of global implementation of the TFA. As we all know, 
implementation of the TFA improves transparency, s upports small and medium enterprises, reduces 
costs and boosts global trade. Global implementation of the TFA benefits all Members, and as 
mentioned earlier in the Committee, this Committee has a role in supporting Members achieve 
implementation, through e xperience sharing, capacity building, compendiums and informal sessions 
such as yesterday 's, all to support implementation of the TFA.  
7.30.  UK stakeholders welcomed the Government 's response in terms of digitali zation of 
documentation, and they were supporting  of the UK 's efforts to automate and digitali ze the 
remaining processes. The UK made the decision to make permanent the measure of accepting origin 
certificates in electronic form and have invited other partner countries in implementing this measure. 
We wi ll be replacing manual paper -based Phytosanitary Certificates with digitali zed certificates also 
known as ePhytos. Digiti zing this process will reduce the potential for error and fraud which can be 
time-consuming when Phytosanitary Certificates need to be replaced and cause delays in affected 
consignments being released. And to give another example, the UK has also taken steps to accept 
digitali zed versions of ATA Carnets as part of a WCO and International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) 
initiative. The UK 's guar anteeing association and issuing association, the London Chamber of 
Commerce and Industry (LCCI) have recently updated their systems to allow them to issue and G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 36 - 
 
  process e -ATA Carnets. The pilot went live at Heathrow Airport in early May and HMRC are looking  
at the possibility of further locations , such as Dover , taking part in the pilot in due course.  
7.31.  The UK is in the process of introducing its Electronic Trade Documents Bill, which is based on 
the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records and will remov e the legal obstacle to electronic 
versions of trade documents such as e -Bills of Lading in the UK. We  have heard communications 
during this Committee and others on the importance of digitali zation, and we 've taken steps in the 
UK to build towards a ‘digital by default ' border.  
7.32.  Our stakeholders praised the quick identification of seafarer, cargo and logistics professionals 
as key workers in the UK, which enabled supply chains to keep operating during the pandemic. 
The UK's NTFC have proposed that in future crises, the global community could work together to 
grant all logistics professionals with internationally recogni zed key worker exemptions.  
7.33.  Finally, our stakeholders emphasi zed the importance of communication, both in terms of 
joined -up government communications and close coordination with the private sector. The rapidly 
changing landscape at the start of the pandemic underlined the importance of consistent and 
transparent messaging.  This reiterates the importance of disseminating importa nt information 
through online mechanisms as soon as possible, but also illustrates the importance of the NTFC as 
a mechanism to coordinate domestic agencies and stakeholders. At the informal meeting yesterday, 
several panellists spoke on the importance of communication and agency cooperation in ensuring 
rapid and effective responses to disasters. Our existing cross -departmental relationships were crucial 
in responding to this pandemic.  
C. Compendium: Sharing Experiences Related to the COVID -19 Crisis as of 1 July 2021 
(G/TFA/W/40/Rev.4 ) – Request from Canada for Consideration of Possible Next Steps  
7.34.  The delegate of Canada  indicated the following:  
7.35.  In 2020, the Committee undertook  a process of sharing information about the trade facilit ation 
actions that we have taken individually as Members to help our authorities address the pandemic 
and to keep trade as frictionless as possible. The compendium is a result of that experience sharing 
exercise . We ended up including it as an Annex to the four-year TFA review document which we 
finished in November 2021 and we have not come back to this compendium  since. The Chair's report 
on the pandemic work that we have done  was spurred by the pandemic declaration from MC12 which 
asked relevant committees to analyse lessons that have been learned and challenges experienced 
during the COVID -19 pandemic . A stocktaking exercise would  then be taken up by the General 
Council . I think there was an expectation  in the CTG  that each of the committees in their own way 
will provide some information that reflects on the lessons learned from the pandemic.  
7.36.  What I am trying to do here is spur a c onsideration of the compendium in addition to the 
experience the UK has just shared with us . I am wondering whether there is a way to extrait from 
the compendium something more coherent and helpful, a reference point that can be use ful for 
Members in the f uture to see some of the practices that were taken by Members  that helped them 
maintain frictionless borders . I feel there is need for us to have a more considered conversation 
about how we can come together, how we can produce a document like that in resp onse to what 
our ministers in MC12 asked us to do.  
7.37.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
7.38.  There is a lot of information in the compendium . I think it is possible to go from the 
compendium to that next iteration of document in different  ways. T he next step is how to rationalize 
all this information, put it together in a coherent manner  so that it can be digested by somebody 
reading it and forms the basis to say that this is what we recognize from our experiences as the 
lessons we learned  to take forward to build practices .  
7.39.  The US took that initiative when we put together the six principles of the NTFC by distilling 
the 25 presentations down to what we thought was the lowest level of commonality of what we 
heard over 25 presentations. If distilling the compendium should be the work during an informal, 
we would be open to it. I very much appreciate the idea of using th e compendium as the source 
because based on the pandemic there are expectations, Ministerial declarations of what we are going G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  to produce. We have been taking the view that the threa d we wanted to pull on was the humanitarian 
shipments and cargo and I think that can also be wrapped up into the lessons learned . Then even if 
there were ten lessons l earned that we could all agree on at a certain level that does not preclude 
deeper dives into those higher level lessons learned to take it further so that the work has a coherent 
and complementary nature moving forward. I appreciate Canada  putting the ide a forward and 
starting the discussion and am interested to hear what others think.  
7.40.  The delegate of Singapore  indicated the following:  
7.41.  Allow me to thank the UK for the detailed presentation on  the lessons learned from the 
COVID -19. It is certainly useful to understand the different difficulties faced by different Members 
during the pandemic and allow us to continue to learn from one another and how we can avoid these 
problems in the future. Singapore would like to thank Canada for raising the very useful s uggestions 
on the compendium . Singapore is of the view that the TFA and the Committee's work are relevant 
in contributing to an effective and comprehensive WTO response to pandemics. We agree that there 
is much potential to further build on the compendium and other relevant initiatives of the Committee 
to deliver on the Ministers ' Decision at MC12 and to ensure that there is continuity in these efforts 
to prepare ourselves for the next pandemic. We look forward to work ing with Canada, the Secretariat 
and ot her interested delegations taking this matter forward.  
7.42.  The delegate of the European Union  indicated the following:  
7.43.  The EU appreciates the presentation by the UK , and also Canada for starting this conversation. 
The EU also notes that a similar discussion is ongoing in the Committee on Market Access  (CMA)  
where it has been well received and useful. The EU would recommend reviewing the CMA document 
and drawing conclusions from already conducted experience sharing sessions, either as inspiration 
or as looking  at overlaps between CTF and CMA.  
7.44.  The delegate of the Ecuador  indicated the following:  
7.45.  We thank the United Kingdom for their presentation. There are several interesting points 
which we would like to highlight in this context of analysing the response of t he Organization to the 
COVID -19 pandemic and how we can prepare for future crises. I would also like to recall the 
discussions at the CTG a few weeks ago. Ecuador 's views regarding the response to the pandemic is 
that we cannot only take note of good pract ices but indeed be better prepared for future crises. As 
such, we believe that the compendium is a solid foundation for us to continue to carry out that 
analysis.  
7.46.  We share  Canada's views. W e believe that we should think further about the specific format 
that the contribution could take . In any case we believe that the contributions of the various 
committees , including for example  both Market Access and Trade Facilitation , can bring specific 
contributions on their area of competence . We believe we can continue the analysis in an informal 
way. There are some ideas that still need to be properly looked at in detail but we do believe that 
this Committee can make a significant  contribution to this conversation.  
7.47.  The delegate of the United Kingdom  indicated the following:  
7.48.  The UK's Electronic  Trade Documents Bill is currently passing through Parliament , we 
introduced it in October 2022. It is progressing through our stages of Parliament  and we are hoping 
that it will be implemented in the coming months.  
7.49.  The Chair indicated the following:  
7.50.  I thank the United Kingdom and Canada for their presentations. Once again, I would like to 
thank delegations for sharing their views . The incomi ng Chair will wish to continue discussions in the 
Committee either in formal or informal meetings on its work in the area of reviewing and building 
on the lessons learned from the pandemic response.  
7.51.  That conclude d agenda item 7.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  8  REQUEST BY THE COMMITTEE THAT THE WTO ECONOMIC RESEARCH AND STATISTICS 
DIVISION UPDATE ITS 2015 WORLD TRADE REPORT ON THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES 
OF IMPLEMENTING THE WTO TRADE FACILITATION AGREEMENT, INCLUDING THE DATA 
PROJECTIONS, AND REPORT THE RESULTS TO THE TRADE FACILITATION COMMITTEE NO 
LATER THAN ITS FIRST FORMAL MEETING OF 2023 (G/TFA/2,  PARA 9.3(IX))  
8.1.  The Chair indicated the following:  
8.2.  The Committee will recall  that as part of its 4 -year review of the TFA  concluded in 2021, the 
Committee requested that the WTO Economic Research and Statistics Division (ERSD) update its 
"2015 World Trade Report on the Benefits and Challenges of Implementing the WTO Trade 
Facilitation Agreement", including the data projectio ns, and report the results to the Trade 
Facilitation Committee no later than its first formal meeting of 2023.  
8.3.  Accordingly, the ERSD has prepared a working paper on "Trade and Welfare Effects of the WTO 
Trade Facilitation Agreement" which they will present  to us today. But before that paper, ERSD will 
first present some results from work it has carried out on "The Impact of the TFA on Trade Costs".  
8.4.  The representative of the WTO Secretariat  indicated the following  on the paper "The Impact of 
the TFA on Trade Costs":  
8.5.  This present ation reflects preliminary work with preliminary results. There is a lot of innovative 
work going on in this  area. We have produced a new set of data on trade costs, so this is a new 
methodo logy.  
8.6.  The estimate of trade costs that form the basis of our analysis are those that the Secretariat 
has recently developed based on a new methodology. It has been issued as the WTO Trade Cost 
Index. This Trade Costs Database is an indirect measure of overall trade frictions between countries . 
It is a very comprehensive measure of trade cost that includes many factors beyond the trade policy , 
for example, distance, and also different preferences for domestically produced goods and foreign 
goods. The indire ct measures of trade costs have been used also by others, what is new in our case 
is the methodology.  
8.7.  It is a methodology that allows us to have directional trade costs, trade costs of exports and 
trade costs of import s. Traditionally , economies have been working with symmetric  trade costs so 
we are able to do this, we are able to account for differences across sectors in the responsiveness 
to trade costs and also we are able to clean the data from measurement  errors. A limitation of th is 
database is that we need a lot of data for doing that so the coverage in terms of countries is less 
than what we would be able to do if were to use only trade data. In the database we issued online 
last year, there are about 43 economies. For this study  that we present today we are extending the 
database and using the new OECD T iVA database that has been very recently released . We cover 
72 economies and this include s about 37 high income economies  and 34 lower income economies, 
including five LDCs.  
8.8.  The second novelty is that we use for the first time on trade costs an index of the WTO Trade 
Facilitation Agreement database, and we build from this database an index of the share d number  of 
common commitments between countries as a measure of the ease of tra de that the TFA has 
produced. Basically , the underlin ing assumption  is that if countries share common commitments 
they save time in trading, there is less paperwork , there is more certainty in accessing the foreign 
market and this is a reduction of trade c osts. 
8.9.  With the new methodology, we try to explain this trade cost as a function of a number of 
variables . One is the share of common commitment between countries . We have a number of control 
variables that try to capture trade policy variables. We have , for instance , tariffs, the presence of a 
regional trade agreement or non -tariff measures or other variables that try to measure IT 
connectivity , transport costs and govern ance variable s. These measures range from the percentage 
of mobile penetration in a cou ntry, the liner shipping cost, the quality of rulemaking  - all variables 
that traditionally have been considered as determinants  of trade costs . Then we have econometrics, 
some fixed effects, some controls that are generic control for export er-sector -time variation  or 
import er-sector time variation.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 39 - 
 
  8.10.  Based on this, the first important finding is that the TFA has had a significant effect on trade 
costs – an estimat ed reduction of 16% . Not only that , a full implementation of commitments will 
have addition al significant effects on trade costs  of a 5% reduction . This is a work in progress and 
we are still trying to refine the magnitude of these effects .  
8.11.  As a way to get a sense of how significant the TFA has been, we have compared the estimated 
effects of th e impact of the Agreement  with the similar effect of the impact of the formation of RTAs 
(37%) and get even in relative terms a very significant  impact whereby the TFA commitments have 
been almost half as powerful as the formation o f RTAs (16%) . 
8.12.  Then we lo ok at the impact by level of income and here the second interesting important 
result  is that the largest reduction  in trade costs has been in the trade cost of the import s of lower 
income countries from high income countries. And when you look at the estim ated 24% impact in 
terms of potential additional reduction of trade cost s, what we get is the larger potential reduction 
comes from the further commitment s by lower income countries and the trade between lower income 
countries. The message is that additional commitments by lower income countries will further reduce 
the bilateral trade costs between lower income countries and that is the most significant relative 
effect that we estimate.  
8.13.  When we look at the  robustness of results by sector, an intere sting result is that the TFA 
appears to have a significant effect in several sectors. Also , there is potential for significant  further 
reduction of trade costs in several sectors. As a last point , we do get relatively stronger impact on 
agriculture than in  other manufacturing sectors. We have tried a breakdown  of this result  and again 
what this result show s is that a lot of the effect comes from the commitments of lower income 
economies.  
8.14.  As I said, this is work in progress. We are currently undertaking a n umber of robustness tests 
including other measure s of trade facilitation beyond the one we are using in this study. The OECD 
uses the trade facilitation index developed by the OECD, our plan is to also test the robustness with 
this and with additional cont rols that we were not able to introduce yet. So we keep updating results 
as more data become available. TiVA is available only up to 2019 so as new editions of TiVA will be 
released we will be able to improve our estimations. We are planning to issue the r esults  and update 
of our findings on the Trade Cost Database .  
8.15.  Another representative of the WTO Secretariat  indicated the following  on the paper "Trade 
And Welfare Effects Of The WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement" : 
8.16.  As you certainly remember since you made the request in 2015 in the context of the World 
Trade Report, we did some ex -ante assessments  and simulations on the potential effects of the TFA 
and the results were that such potential effects could be very big - in the dollar terms expressed at 
the time  it was around USD 1 trillion of additional trade up until 2030. So it is actually a very good 
idea to have asked the question as you did that after about five years of operation of the Agreement, 
have some of these effects actually panned  out in practice.  What we expect from a multilateral 
agreement  coming into force  is that t here can be effects on ground that countries themselves 
unilaterally  might not have realized and that is due to several reasons. For instance, one of the most 
important reasons is tha t you can internalize  positive externalities. What does that mean? Trade 
facilitation is in economic terms undersupplied because when you implement a positive measure it 
may benefit your own companies, but it also benefits companies in other countries that do  not pay 
for the c osts of your efforts. So these are just some of the reasons why we have some hope that we 
actually can find some economic effects from the Agreement entering into force itself. And that is 
also the reason why for the first time, I believe, we were the ones  to use actually not the TFI 
indicators from the OECD which exist for a long time, but our own Trade Facilitation Agreement 
database which shows for all the 238 sub -articles that you can commit to, who committed to which 
article at what particular moment i n time after the entry of force of the Agreement.  
8.17.  Unfortunately , for various reasons , we could carry the analysis out not for five years but only 
for three  years and we were afraid we would not get any impact over such a short period of time 
but as it tur ned out we did. A little trend that we can already discern  over the first three years after 
the entry into force of the TFA, whether we look at the average  or the median , the number of 
commitments  made by developing Member s over time increased. Why by deve loping Members? 
Because developed Member s committed  to all the articles right from the beginning of the Agreement. G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  What is also interesting is that the median actually increases  much steeper which shows you that in 
the beginning in 2017 a few countries too k comparatively more commitments but over time those 
who initially made only a few commitments actually made many more commitment s, catching up. 
And what this tells me as a first basic insi ght is actually that the design of the TFA to give countries 
time t o decide when they want to implement what has actually been used and has been brought to 
flourish .  
8.18.  In a multilateral context you will expect that if both countries commit , for instance , to border 
agency cooperation , to coordinate on certain types of simil ar policies , that this is beneficial . Here you 
can also see that the number of common commitments has increased over time. We have broken 
down this increase between 2017 and 2019  and we have  broken it down by different articles . 
Practically  for all of the articles, except Article 8  (border agency cooperation), there was a positive 
evolution over time. Some articles like Article 3 (advance rulings) for instance  were implemented 
more easily, an d progress was made over time but the number of commitment s has not increased 
as much as for other articles. So we used a workhorse model of trade which explains by commonly 
accepted variables what determines bilateral trade between two countries and in th is model we 
brought  in two variables from the TFA database. One variable that measures  when both trading 
partners that we are looking at when they really started to make any kind of commitment. And the 
other variable , which we call the intensive effect , measures  the number of commitments that are 
made simultaneously  by these two countries. In our estimations , which we conduct across over 100 
different sectors and by all WTO Members , we then aggregate the results into the main sectors of 
agriculture and manu facturing and we also try to distinguish between effects for developing, least 
developed countries and developed Members .  
8.19.  Again, we focus on this bilateral dimension for reasons that this is well grounded in the 
literature on common participation in an ag reement . It has also some nice effects in terms of 
econometric techni ques that you can use and control for anything else that might be happening at 
the country sector level over time, and that might not be explained and should not be falsely 
attributed to the TFA.   
8.20.  Our overall results are in line with what my colleague  foreshadowed for trade costs - that the 
TFA has promoted particularly agricultural effect amongst those developing Member s that started to 
make commitments. On average , a 22% increase for bilateral trade flows between two committed 
developing Members  and more commitments  - so this intensive margin that I was talking about has 
led to also higher trade on average evaluated at the mean of commitments to 16% deeper 
liberaliz ation.  
8.21.  We find minor effects of the TFA commitments for trade and manufacturing but this might be 
more of a compositional effect since over our time period it was basically developing countries where 
the number of commitments or the committing as such cha nged most and for many developing 
countries agriculture is relatively more important than manufacturing sectors. This does not mean 
that the TFA is not important for manufacturing but the effects have maybe already been born out 
previously or are being bor n out on the ground in the actual applied policies . Here we really measure  
a very conservative estimate, what is the effect when you commit. So we get positive effects but 
smaller ones and some of the results are not statistically significant.  
8.22.  We neverthe less then translated these results into trade cost reductions and plugged this in to 
a so-called generical equilibrium model. The previous results give you partial trade effects but as 
you can imagine if you reduce or improve the trading conditions in one s ector, this may have knock -
on effect for other sectors  and for other countries who maybe import the goods in question and this 
has knock -on effects for incomes GDP in countries around the world and it has knock -on effects for 
also factor prices such as wag es. So all of these kind of knock -on effects can be analysed in a general 
equilibrium model, same thing we have done at the time in 2015.  
8.23.  We have also calculated , given th at some of the estimates were not statistically very highly 
significant, we have also  calculated for our general equilibrium effects 90% confidence intervals 
around the central predictions.  
8.24.  The aggregated trade effects are that just in this time period trade grew between 1.17% 
worldwide due to the TFA commitments that were made during tha t time. So it is mainly driven by G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
- 41 - 
 
  the much larger trade increases in the LDCs and the developing Members  where the central 
predictions are around 2.5%.  
8.25.  By sector we get larger effects in agriculture by some substantial amount  - again the results 
are partic ularly large in least developed countries and other developing Members  on the order of up 
to 17% . But we get through this general equilibrium effect also quite interesting effects in 
manufacturing on the order of 3.5% for LDCs and developing Member s. On av erage , agricultural 
trade increases by about 5% and manufacturing trade by 1.5%. What is very interesting is also that 
because of the bilateral nature we can aggregate the bilateral results into bilateral export changes 
by regions. What is particularly int eresting here is that one of the biggest beneficiaries of these 
commitments and trade effects that result from it is Africa, where not only intra -African trade 
increased by over 4% but also trade with Asia, the Middle East, and similar effects with the Sou th 
and Central America and the Caribbean of around 2.5%, but you can also see that for some of the 
other regions these effects are also quite big and bigger certainly than the average export increases 
for the world as discussed previously.  
8.26.  The real income  effect or the welfare effect or GDP effect, you can see that the largest effects 
overall of up to 2% in additional GDP . That is not 2% additional growth every year , that is a flow 
effect so it is 2% more when the commitments enter into force and then every year it stays at that 
higher level. The biggest effects are for Asia, for Africa also 1.4 -1.5% and then for the developed 
countries lower than that but still at th e order of 0.5 -0.6%. So, how do these results compare, even 
though they are very difficult to compare because we used still different techni ques back in 2015 at 
the time we were subject to a lot more uncertainty of what would actually happen on the ground 
and needed to take some rough assumptions  of how these trade facilitation commitments would 
translate into trade cost reductions.  
8.27.  We predicted trade flow increases by 2% and up to 2.7% for different scenarios and gains in 
GDP of 0.3 -0.5% roughly . The curr ent numbers are not as high as this but we ha d at the time carried 
out a 15 year -analysis up to 2030 and now we have had the first three years  of implementation . 
There is a very important paper by  Dr Peter E gger and colleagues who have shown that the trade  
effects and the GDP, the welfare effect of a trade agreement actually increase more than 
proportionally  over time. We think actually that for the first three  years, this 1.17% of trade flow 
increases and the 0.12% gains to GDP for the world, and much high er for most developing countries, 
is actually quite an encouraging result. You can also see that it is larger than some of the other  
studies that have used the OECD TFIs mainly and that have been carried out between 2015 and our 
most recent work.  
8.28.  So where does this leave us in terms of the few main insights. On average the number of 
commitments has indeed increased in these first three  years by roughly 20% but there is a large 
untapped potential that remains to make deeper commitments. We expect an upward trajectory  of 
these impacts in line with the literature and we think the current findings are already very 
encouraging. Of course , there are special areas that remain where maybe more attention is required,  
such as advance rulings and border agency corporat ions where  the number of commitments have 
been relatively low .  
8.29.  The delegate of India indicated the following:  
8.30.  These are very interesting and thought provoking presentations.  
8.31.  The presentation shows certain numbers in percentage. What do these percentages indicate ? 
For example , if it says a 24% reduction , what is the base unless we know the trade costs and what 
24% reduction represents ?  
8.32.  The presentation  indicates that at a present level of commitment the trade cost reduction has 
been highest from high income to lower  income countries and high income to high income  countries . 
As compared to this, the lower income to low er income countries and low er to hig h income countries 
are significantly lower . Does this mean that the trade flowing from high income  countries becomes 
more competitive because of the present level of commitment s? Therefore , the results which are 
shown in the subsequent presentation are a l ittle counter intuitive  in the sense that if high income 
to lower income countries cost reduction is more than lower income to lower income countries  and 
lower income  to high income  countries , then actually the trade from high income to high income G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  countries should be benefitted more because of the se TFA commitment s. So could you explain that 
please.  
8.33.  The delegate of the European Union  indicated the following:  
8.34.  The EU would also like thank the two speakers for the very interesting presentations, whic h 
highlighted the importance of our work here. It was very interesting that although there is still very 
limited empirical evidence on the actual post -implementation impact of TFA on trade flows and 
welfare, we can already draw from the study that the TFA was important for Member s to further 
reduce costs associated with trade barriers and regulatory differences. Another important conclusion 
is that the positive gains are more pronounced for LDCs.  
8.35.  It also  highlighted that if the TFA is fully implemented , we can expect a total reduction of 21% 
in trade costs on average. This is a very encouraging point for Members in their endeavours to apply 
their TFA commitments in full, especially for low -income countries, where the maximum benefit 
could reach up to 34% of  a reduction in trade costs.  
8.36.  The delegate of Ecuador  indicated the following:  
8.37.  We add our voice to thank the Secretariat for having presented this update  to the  information 
we received in  2015. Within the periodic review of the Trade Facilitation Agreement , Ecuador was 
one of those Members that voiced their interest in updating  these figures. For  some  of us, the 
projected figure USD 1 billion as the possible potential of this Agreement became widespread,  not 
only in the Organization but in other for a. It makes good sense to update the information to see how  
these  projections compare to real world implementation. Notwithstanding  the limitations that data 
availability presents, the preliminary results are encouraging . The projected cost reduction in 2015 
was around 14.3%,  whereas the updated figure is roughly 1 6%, with an additional 5% if the 
Agreement is fully implemented. This is very encouraging,  and we can see the benefits of full 
implementation of this Agreement.  
8.38.  A specific question I would like to r aise has to do with the figure of USD 1 billion. 
The percentage  growth  in aggregate trade for 2015  fluctuated between 2.06 and 2.73% but the 
updated figure is 1.17% at present. We would like to know if there are  any projected figures in 
millions of dollars  to have a clearer  idea on how this compares with the previous monetary figure.  
I would  also like to know a bit more about the difference between  trade in  agricultural or 
manufactured goods. It is our understanding that the measures are being applied equal ly for all 
categories of products, but we would like to know more about  where this  difference  in results arises  
between the two categories. Those are some preliminary questions, and we will be looking at the 
document more closely to issue additional commen ts in the future.  
8.39.  We see that this as ongoing work , and it is very useful especially when it comes to how we 
reflect about  the benefits of implementing the Agreement.  
8.40.  The delegate of the Russian Federation  indicated the following:  
8.41.  Thank you very much fo r these extremely interesting presentations and for the updated 
reports. On the analysis, the fact that struck me most in the presentation is that TFA commitments 
were almost half as economically effective as RTA commitments and had most economic impact. 
In this regard I was wondering if we can break down the TFA impact even further . Does your analysis 
show what was the most impactful single TFA commitment or can we make a ranking of individual 
TFA commitments in terms of the impact on trade.  
8.42.  The representative o f the WTO Secretariat  indicated the following:  
8.43.  Let me stress again that the presentation was really targeted to raise awareness of what we 
are doing and the ongoing efforts to continue to estimate the impact of the TFA. For this reason , we 
do not yet have a report finalized  but our aim is to finaliz e the research and be more confident about 
the results, trying all the robustness tests . We will produce a note this year which  we will issue on 
the Trade Cost D atabase. There is a limitation due to the fact that  the information we have is only 
for a three -year period after 2017 . In the estimation we have presented, we have used the same 
time period for the two studies (welfare and trade costs) so I think one of the next robustness test s G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  that we will do is try , for at least the estimation  on the impact of trade costs , to extend it to the 
whole time period because this will allow us to introduce more control and be more confident about 
the size of the effects.  
8.44.  I thank you for some interesting suggestions going forw ard on the work we have to do . I think 
it is a very good idea to have results for the different type of commitments and rank the different 
types. We have not done that and we will do it. On the impact of agriculture versus manufacturing, 
in general , the ef fects may d iffer by sectors even if the TFA is not a sector -specific measure. What 
we look at is the impact of the measure , and the impact of the measure depends on a number of 
factors . Therefore, one way in which the TFA reduces trade costs , for example , is by reducing  the 
time to cross the border and sectors are sensitive to time in different ways . Clearly , the agricultural 
sector is a sector where time is important because goods expire . There are also manufacturing 
sectors that are time -sensitive and those where global value chains are significan t. But there is a 
reason why effects may d iffer by sector . In our specific case , given that what we are looking at is a 
proxy of measures that have been put in place mainly by certain lower income countries since 2017 , 
than we capture this variation more and these countries that implemented most of the measures 
are those that mainly trade in agricultural goods . Therefore, I think it is not incoherent that we 
capture this effect in our results  
8.45.  A second representative of the WTO Secretariat  indicated the following:  
8.46.  It is a very good idea to try to pursue  a more granular  analysis on which kind of commitments 
have the most impact. This is in the outlook of our paper already, this is exactly what we want to 
do. We need more years of data for that to get us significant and consistent  effects. We have already 
played around wi th it, not with the individual articles but we have grouped the articles according to 
our own judgement in commitments that focus on procedures at the border , in articles that are more 
focused on transparency , and articles that focus on co oporation . And we got some encouraging and 
interesting results there, but they were not yet right to present. But this is a very good way forward .  
8.47.  We did not get strong effects from manufacturing but that does not mean that the effects are 
not important. The OECD who will  look at a much longer time period and also look at the impact of 
the actual policies on the ground , including in developed countries , will show you that on the ground 
the TFA  had a very substantive impact for manufacturing , as well.  
8.48.  Finally, we did indeed translate the percentage growth increases into constant dollar terms 
so the trade increase that we projected for the world overall would result in an additional 
USD 231 billion in constant 2016 USD. That would compare to the between USD 500 billion and 
USD 1 trillion of additional trade that we projected in 2015, as a result of  the TFA . This was in 
constant 2007  USD at the time so it is not entirely comparable but it gives a f lavour that even in 
USD terms these are very good outcomes.  
8.49.  Regarding the  difference between agriculture and manufacturing, we were also surprised by 
this result . We found a good technical explanation for it but on the political side we also found it 
particularly interesting that the TFA had such an important impact in a sector that we all know here 
is particularly difficult to liberalize . We thought this was good news for agriculture and good news 
for developing countries.  
8.50.  The delegate of the United Stat es indicated the following:  
8.51.  I want to extend my thanks to the authors and the economists for the report and 
presentations . It was wonderful. I am not surprised about the effect the TFA  has on trade. 
We believe d this from the early 2000 s that this was the effect that the TFA  was going to have on 
trade. We were told years ago that reducing trade costs would  have a more beneficial effect than 
getting rid of every tariff . But it is wonderful, it promotes continuation of the work we have begun 
when you start he aring the results are real and concrete. We hear that every time we meet in the 
Committee because of the experience sharing and the lessons learned . Throughout those sessions, 
I have not seen one presentation where a Member could not cite  to how much time,  cost that they 
have saved in their own individual experiences. That is the common theme but it is wonderful to 
start seeing a larger picture of it and being able to explain it.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  8.52.  I was not surprised over the difference between agriculture and manufacturing, that tracks 
with my understanding of the border. Highly regulated goods are more expensive to move, they 
require more documents, there are more agencies touching them, they requ ire different storage . So 
their costs are much different than if you are importing pocketbooks or shoes . These are just not as 
highly regulated . Some Members  could have three to five different agencies that touch on agriculture 
product, and no agency  touch es the shoes or shirt s. So, for those products  you go with one customs 
document while an ag riculture  product could have nine documents with three different inspections . 
So every time we hear , like the UK s aid, that they are taking on e -phyto  that means tha t you just 
brought down the cost and that just is exponential. So I was not surprised to see that kind of 
difference between agriculture and industrial goods. I think it is very positive and something really 
to talk about the importance of agriculture to t his building , especially to developing countries to 
understand what an impact it is.  
8.53.  The TFA was pragmatic , it was never esoteric . These are not political debates in. We got to 
the conclusion of TFA because we all recognized that these were reforms we kne w were good to 
undertake. We are undertaking them and we are seeing the results of this progression.  
8.54.  What did strike me is the increase of almost 4.5% in intra -regional African trade. You have 
TFA supporting that , we have the AfCFTA coming , we have an MOU  to work on trade facilitation  in 
that context. So there is a lot of synergies there. We have gone through these discussions about the 
challenges of implementation and so on, and we never hear a Member say, "I just don't think this is 
a good idea, I don't want to do this ". That is never the response in the Committee. T here are 
challenges figuring out how to do the technical assistance and move it forward, but there are 
solutions in the Committee  because we have many, many successful developing countries tha t have 
used the technical assistance and capacity building support. I think one of the next steps is really 
drilling down to understand where the difficulties arise because if there are ways to overcome them 
that should be our priority to ensure these bene fits are fully reaped by everybody.  
8.55.  The delegate of Canada  indicated the following:  
8.56.  I would like to thank the authors for this work as it is helping us, it is confirming for us at the 
macro level what we have been hearing at the micro level in all of the Committee experience sharing 
sessions. It is one more support  for the Committee to point to, to continue to promote the 
implementation of the TFA and the fact that this Agreement is good for us. The Members that have 
undertaken the reforms  are doing it because it is good for them. It is good for them as governments 
because it reduces their costs of implementing customs check s in the border cl earances but it is also 
good for their businesses because it reduces the ir costs to export . It also reduces the costs for those 
businesses to import inputs to their production processes.  Regarding the difference between 
agriculture and manufacturing goods,  the preceding explanation makes a lot of sense to me  that 
agriculture products are  going to have a lot more agenci es and documentation required. Finally, a s 
the Committee gets  closer to the next four-year review in 2025, it could maybe  consider having thi s 
kind of information updated and incorporated into that review .  
8.57.  The Committee took note  of the information and the statements made.  
8.58.  That concluded  agenda item 8.  
9  "THE EVOLVING CONTRIBUTION OF TRADE FACILITATION POLICIES TO ENHANCING 
TRADE" - PRESENTATION BY OECD  
9.1.  The representative of the OECD  indicated the following:  
9.2.  I am happy to follow the WTO presentation s as our work is really complementary  and helping 
to highlight the positive results that are resulting  from the TFA . 
9.3.  At the OECD we are trying to look at a longer time period, from around 2011 -2012 as we are 
trying to exploit as much as possible the database that we have been putting together on t he trade 
facilitation indicators. This hopefully will give a longer timeframe as to the TFA effects and also trying 
to delve a little bit into the different measures.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  9.4.  The OECD ha d been starting to look into trade facilitation policies already some years b efore 
the TFA . As the negotiations on trade facilitation were ongoing, we were trying to collect information 
on what different countries were doing in terms of their regulatory frameworks for trade facilitation 
and also starting  to put those reforms into p lace on the ground. So we thought that it was  now 
timely to exploit the longer time series of our database.  
9.5.  Some of the key objectives that we had with this work is to try to say  what progress has been 
achieved so far. Also , what can we say for different c ountry groups at different levels of development , 
also for different regions . Plus, what additional  benefits can we still take from further  trade facilitation 
reforms and what areas could be prioritized. This links very much to the TFA as through the trade  
facilitation indicators we are able to capture many of the policy areas that are covered by the 
Agreement . But there are also different areas where we try to go a little bit beyond , particularly in 
areas  such as border agency corporation where we try to look at what are the mechanisms to share 
information , to use IT tools , or the different institutional frameworks for that kind of collaboration.  
9.6.  In addition, g iven the COVID -19 pandemic and other addition al disruptions to supply chains , 
we were trying to provide some insights into what types of reforms can support resilience.  
9.7.  We face a lot of different challenges in this type of analysis. We are dealing with the challenge 
of covering as many economies as possible within the analysis  as well as  the time coverage as there 
are still just a few years for which data is available after  entry into force of  the TFA . We wanted to 
capture a bit of the COVID period so for this we needed information on trade costs, tr ade flows and 
a different range of trade facilitation policies. What we managed to do is that as we have 11 
indicators across different areas, we basically grouped them around three big categories, 
(i) transparency and predictability issues where we will i nclude areas of consultation with traders, 
advance rulings, fees and charges ; (ii) m ore processes side and automation where we also include 
aspects around documents, and (iii) border agency cooperation where we try to look at what happens 
on the domestic s ide, for each country internally but also how different countries cooperate with 
each other .  
9.8.  We map this trade facilitation regulatory environment and operational practices through our 
indicators for which we have information since 2012 . The latest series  that we have is for 2022. 
It was not possible to incorporate that into the quantitative  analysis that I will show today because 
we could not match that with trade cost data or with trade flow s data as we still need more time to 
catch up on that. On the in dicators , we try to look at the regulatory environment for trade facilitation 
to see where different tools have been put in place , whether it is single window or pre -arrival 
processing or authorized operator programmes, and to the extent possible , also say  a little bit more 
on how th at is implemented on the ground. If we take pre -arrival processing or authorized operators , 
we would  also be trying to capture to the extent possible how many trade transactions will actually 
be covered by that or how many traders are within a certified trader programme. And then also to 
see how things are evolving on the ground to the extent  possible  with regard to these aspects.  
9.9.  There are  six main findings from this ongoing analysis. Through both the trade cost data that 
we use and the trade flows data that we also employ we try to take th e longer time period so as to 
be able to use mostly all the year s that we have available for the trade facilitation indicators' 
database. On the trade cost side , we used a trade cost database that is from the World Bank and 
the UN Economic Commission for Asia and Pacific which covers  most of the 160 economies that we 
cover in our TFI database, as well as th e longer time period since more or less 2011 -12.  
9.10.  The first  key takeaway  is the impact that we managed to cover from the period since the 
Agreement was more or less concluded, up until 2020. From putting in place thes e kind of reforms, 
we see more or less on average either for the income groups or for the regional groups that we look 
at that we have a trade cost reduction of about 5% on average. Going further and continuing these 
reforms and particularly putting them in place on the ground can lead up to trade cost reductions of 
20%. So there is still a lot of scope to do work in this area.  
9.11.  Going to trade flows, one of the key insights that we got exploring the  period from 2012 up 
until 2019 is that trade flow impact h as continued to grow over time. We see that there was really 
a strong impact since the TFA negotiations were concluded and then that impact started to be strong 
again after the Agreement  entered into force. It was an important result from our perspective t o say 
that basically even before it entered into force, countries were already doing a lot of trade facilitating G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  activities . Of course , many LDCs and developing economies were focused on establishing their 
categorization and notifications but a lot was alr eady happening so there was already a big 
momentum since the conclusion of the TFA. 
9.12.  Regarding the sectoral impacts that we are able to capture , for this longer time-period we see 
strong effects for several manufacturing sectors, including chemicals, textil es, mechanical transport 
equipment and so on but also , again , for the agricultural sector. We try to look also at some inputs 
to the agricultural sector , such as fertilizers , and we see that we have strong impacts there. These 
are the average impacts across more than 160 economies which is quite a significant geographical 
coverage , and we think that it provides a good highlight of what the impacts are in terms of 
potentially i ncreasing exports.  
9.13.  Taking  a deeper dive into the types of measures around transparency, automating the 
streamlining processes , and border agency cooperation , one key result , looking either at income 
groups of economies or regional grouping s, is that autom ating and streamlining is the area that has 
the most potential to contribute to enhancing trade world -wide. This seems to be followed by areas 
of transparency  - how information is being made available, how stakeholders are being consulted 
on different matt ers but also these more technical areas in terms of advanced rulings or appeal 
processes or fees and charges. We also capture border agency cooperation but here we do not 
always get a significant effect. As we look over the time period, one explanation  that we try to 
highlight is that through the TFI database we see improvements in this area mostly for the latter 
period of the time series that we cover , particularly since the COVID period and actually through the 
2022 update , we see that the domestic border  agency cooperation was the area that mostly 
improved throughout. We hope that as we get more data after 2020 and we are able to redo this 
exercise we will potentially see more significant effects throughout , even if at this stage we can 
already see that t his area is important for several groups of economies.  
9.14.  The fifth result of the analysis comes back to th e improvement in operational practices. 
The key takeaway here is that the effects from putting in place these regulatory frameworks have 
more effect if you make those work on the ground. So when you put pre -arrival processing in place, 
and it is operated electronically and having it gradually cover more and more trade transactions , 
this is what will help  get th e entire value from implementing these kind of reforms.  
9.15.  We also tried to see from the perspective of supply chain resilience over this longer period 
how these types of trade facilitation policies have helped enhance existing trade relationships , 
i.e. the intensive margin versus developing new marke ts. Here, we can think in terms of finding new 
markets or starting to operate and export in new sectors. We think this matters from  a resilience 
perspective . For example, d uring the COVID -19 pandemic we saw that when there were issues with 
one input supplier or one destination market for export s, the alternatives and how easy it is to pivot 
the trade facilitating policies can help you diversify or use other suppliers when th ere may be issues 
on one side. What we found,  looking at the different regions that we cover, be it Asia -Pacific, 
Europe -Central Asia, Latin America, Middle East or Sub -Saharian Africa,  is that trade facilitation does 
help enhance existing trade relationsh ips and so bring s more trade where that already exist s across 
all the different regions . We also get some positive impacts on the extensive margin. They are less 
clear in terms of the new sectors but nevertheless we see regions such as Asia -Pacific or 
Sub-Saharian Africa really taking advantage of not just exporting what they used to export before 
putting trade reforms in place but also being able to enter into new sectors  or tap into new kinds of 
markets or types of products.  
9.16.  Some of the implications that we see coming out of this ongoing work is that it seems to be 
important to accelerate these kind of reforms to look into how they can support bo th enhancing 
trade but also the supply chain resilience. We think this is important throughout the different sec tors 
that we can cover. We see that measures in automating and streamlining processes come out to be 
extremely important across all the different regions or groups but we see that there is really value 
in taking that step further and making sure that the  measures actually work well in practice.  
9.17.  Investments in transparency and predictability  also have a positive impact.  
9.18.  There are  less significant results so far with the data that we have on border agency 
cooperation, but we do see that this is where gaps a re most pressing between economies that we 
can cover, but this is also the areas where a lot of reforms have been  happening recently. G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  So hopefully , as we get more data we will be  able to say a little bit more about this as it is also an 
important area to f ocus on.  
9.19.  The delegate of Canada  indicated the following:  
9.20.  One of my main observations from the analysis is about the strongest impact being in in 
Sub-Saharan  Africa and the Asia -Pacific region . The second observation is around this idea of 
automation and streamlining of procedures that have contributed the most to enhancing trade on 
average world -wide. Those are important along with the transparency  and predictability . The results  
reinforce the kind of discussions that we have been having and what we need to be focusing on as 
a Committee around supporting implementation of the Agreement. In terms of the first couple of 
years of a  regional -trade agreement , things don't move as quick ly as possible in terms of increasing 
trade and spreading a little more, but as you get further and deeper into the implementation period 
and the tariffs become a little lower than that is when you start to see the real benefits coming 
around . Therefore, it would be really good to have another go with this in two  to three years' time  
and when we are doing our next four-year review so that we can incorporate a longer time series 
into the analysis which I hope continues to verify the expectations I think most  of us had when we 
were negotiating the Agreement .  
9.21.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following:  
9.22.  What I found very significant in terms of numbers is that you were able to conclude with your 
length of time covering almost a ten -year period t hat the TF reform helped increase global trade in 
goods up to 16% in some areas . That was what we were looking for when we sat down originally 
looking at it. I understand th at the economists put a lot of time and effort into this work and this 
work helps k eep the conversation on trade facilitation  front and centre . It is something we can keep 
presenting on when  talking about why trade facilitation  matters, why it is important , and keep it 
front and centre . We have heard  from the humanitarians, the NGOs, and our fellow Members about 
the importance of transparency, automation and consistency  that when you have to have a plan, 
that yo u have to be implementing before your emergency, so that you then have the tools to deal 
with the emergency. I think that this is  just reinforcing the need to continue on the implementation 
of the TFA and the importance of it in light of digitalization. With regard to border agency 
cooperation, when surveys come around talking about border agency cooperation it is sometimes 
all in t he eyes of the reader as to what is border agency cooperation . For example, you identify 
border agency cooperation  as including  automation, consultation, the reduction of formalities, so 
even if I am implementing them I may not identify them as border agen cy cooperation They don't 
think about it in that term because  it is an idea that separated. Even as a develop ed country, we are 
furthering our implementation on cooperation and automation process  on a constant basis. I t does 
not end.  
9.23.  The representative of the OECD  indicated the following:  
9.24.  Thank you for the feedback and the comments. I think this is the work we wa nt to continue 
as more data becomes available . It is very useful as well to reflect a little bit more on how these 
different areas come together and try to disentangle some of these impacts.  
9.25.  The delegate of Ecuador  indicated the following:  
9.26.  We would like to thank the OECD for their presentation this afternoon. We think it is very 
useful to have this information , as it gives more substance to our analysis of the benefits that arise 
from TFA implementation. At certain times we  have focused too much on implem entation of the 
Agreement and have lost sight of the potential benefits of our implementation work. H aving these 
periodic reminders provides direction to our work regardless of whether you are implementing the 
Agreement or providing technical assistance an d capacity building for implementation. We encourage 
this kind of work;  it would be very useful to look at it during the next review of the Agreement or 
have some feedback as well in an upcoming meeting.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  9.27.  The delegate of Japan  indicated the following:  
9.28.  Thank you very much for the informative presentation. We recognize that five years have 
passed since the WTO TFA became effective, and ten years have passed since the OECD launched 
its TFI s dataset.  
9.29.  We hope that the TFA and TFIs  will continue contributing to reducing the time and costs 
associated with international trade.  
9.30.  We consider the presentation of the paper to be a good practice of the effective inter -
organizational cooperation between the WTO and the OECD, and also to be u seful for promoting the 
further work of the CTF.  
9.31.  The Committee took note  of the information and the statements made.  
9.32.  That conclude d agenda item  9. 
10  THE TRADE FACILITATION AGREEMENT FACILITY – ITEMS RELATED TO THE 
FRAMEWORK (G/TFA/3)  
10.1  Regular update to the Trade Facilitation Committee (G/TFA/TFAF/3)  
10.1.  The Chair drew the Committee's attention to TFAF's regular update to the Trade Facilitation 
Committee which was circulated in document G/TFA/TFAF/3 .  
10.2.  The delegate of Madagascar  indicated the following:  
10.3.  Madagasca r would like to share some information about the technical assistance that our 
Government has received.  
10.4.  Once we approached the TFAF from the permanent representation here in Geneva in 2021 we 
started receiving TFAF support through the financing of the gen eral assembly of our NTFC in 
June 2022. The assembly allowed us to share progress with all of the members , grouping together 
both public and private departments involved in international trade. The general assembly also 
allowed us to put into place and to operationalize three technical working groups which are currently 
engaged in setting up projects within the NTFC, which involves the information portal and the 
observatory. The second group is working on typical customs procedures and the third group is 
working on border coordination. The meeting allowed us to select the relevant stakeholders, put 
them into the relevant groups and then set up a roadmap for work.  
10.5.  The second activity which is currently under way is the use of a TFAF grant for projects to 
implement the 29 notified articles in category  C that have not yet been implemented. The TFAF grant  
will support Madagascar to define its means including all of the technical details which will then be 
defined so that we can seek out development partner suppo rt. Here it is important to note that the 
assistance requested was sent out to donors and development partners but unfortunately no one 
has yet showed their support for its implementation. But we would like to thank TFAF for having 
given the green light to  our request and allowing us to move forward with our category  C measures. 
The project will allow us to properly define the programme and how it can be financed. We would 
also like to thank UNCTAD for its the collaboration on the reform tracker for the NTFC which  allows 
people to see the steps of implementation which have yet to be made and those that have been 
made.  
10.6.  We would also like to thank the United Kingdom Trade Partnership Programme for having 
made the reform tracker possible and for having finance d it. Madagascar can only reiterate its thanks 
both to TFAF and the coordination with other programmes that we are currently benefitting from , 
for example , UNCTAD and the UK programmes. We hope that TFAF  will continue to support its 
partners in the future especially developing countries and the LDCs because the Facility was  put in 
place to support us.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  10.7.  The delegate of Congo  speaking on behalf of the ACP Group indicated the following:  
10.8.  The ACP group apprecia tes the regular updat es by TFAF and we continue to support the 
Facility for the assistance extended to Members of the ACP group.  
10.9.  The Committee took note of the update and of the statements made.  
10.10.   That conclude d agenda item 10.   
11  REPORT BY THE UNITED STATES  ON THE INFORMAL SESSION ON DISASTER 
PREPAREDNESS HELD ON 21 MARCH  
11.1.  The delegate of the United States  indicated the following: We would like to thank everyone 
that participated in the informal session on Disaster Preparedness: A View from the Border, includ ing 
the Chair and WTO Secretariat for facilitating the informal session.  
11.2.  The session covered a lot of very important points showcasing the experience and challenges 
WTO Members, aid agencies, and non -governmental organizations face in moving humanitarian aid 
and relief supplies across international borders during times of disaster, whatever form it may take.  
11.3.  We would like to th ank the presenter  from IMPACCT, Virginie Bohl ; Ambassador Valencia  of 
Ecuador ; Mr. Yengil  of Türkiye ; Mr. Claire Zimba, Mozambique ; Ms. Corinna Drechsel  of Medair ; 
Ms. Danielle Jurman  of the  UN Population Fund (UNFPA) ; Ambassador Antas  of Vanuatu ; Mr. Batac  
of the Mission of the Philippines ; Mr. ELACK  of Madagascar ; Ms. Esterlina Alipate  of Tonga ; 
Ms. Mulki Fozia Abdullah  of Médecins  sans Fronti ères; Mr. Nelson Castano  from International 
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies ; and Mr . Paul Molinaro  of the  World Health 
Organization . 
11.4.  As you can see , we had a very knowledgeable  and diverse group of speakers who shared  a 
lot of information with us. Just a couple of things  to highlight at this point . 
11.5.  Laws and Regulations: During COVID -19, we saw it was possible to simplify clearance 
procedures to accomplish a goal with high political will. Members and NGOs highlighted th e need to 
have laws and regulations in place prior to a disaster occurring.  
11.6.  Border Agency Coordination: Whether using a NTFC or creating a Disaster Management 
Committee, Members highlighted the challenge in coordination between all of the ministries invol ved 
in a disaster response. The Philippines also pointed out that coordination is also a challenge between 
regional, national, provincial, and local governments.  
11.7.  Communication: The most frequently cited challenge was a lack of clarity around what 
customs procedures to follow, which only gets more confusing in a disaster situation. Members noted 
how important it was to communicate this information to traders and to NGOs.  
11.8.  Digitalization: Paper customs formalities and submission of documents at the border can slow 
down the flow of goods causing delays in much needed aid. Mozambique offered that focusing on 
digitalization was a means of resilience building and we agree.  
11.9.  NGO highlights: highlighted programmes they felt were beneficial during  times where they 
needed to supply humanitarian cargo and aid, such as identification as Authorized Economic 
Operators, regional coordination of aid delivery, addressing local content and g overnment 
procurement requirements, navigating export bans, difficult registration for tax exemption, lack of 
cold chain storage or bonded warehouses at port of entry, and need for primary and secondary entry 
points prepared for the humanitarian aid  especi ally when those ports that they would use are 
damaged .  
11.10.   The United States is very excited to continue this conversation on disaster preparedness and 
what future work the CTF could undertake in response to the MC12 decision.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  11.11.   The representative of the World Customs Organization  indicated the following:  
11.12.   The WCO has close to 30 instruments, tools, guidance materials and policy papers directly 
dealing with the cross -border movement of relief consignments and equipment imported for 
humanitarian purposes. Among t hose are provisions in the Revised Kyoto Convention and the 
Convention on Temporary Admission, also known as the Istanbul Convention; five HS classification 
references; eight joint statements with partner international organizations and private sector 
associations; among others. Our oldest tool dates back to the year 1970.  
11.13.   They all aim at supporting our 185 Members in their efforts to efficiently prepare for, respond 
to and recover from natural disasters and public health emergencies.  
11.14.   The instruments and to ols reflect the experiences, best practices and lessons learnt as 
shared by our Members or formulated by the Secretariat as a result of the process of sharing of 
information and delivering of capacity building activities that involves both our Members and relevant 
stakeholders.  
11.15.   Since we last provided updates to the TFC, we finalized the Guidelines on disaster 
management and supply chain continuity, which were approved by the Council in June 2021 and we 
launched three e -learning courses. The e -learning on th e Role of Customs in Disaster Relief which 
aims at raising awareness and presenting the goals of Customs administrations can pursue in three 
phases of the disaster management cycle – Preparedness, Response and Recovery.  
11.16.   The WCO is ready to further support the future work under the TFC in this area.  
11.17.   The delegate of China  indicated the following:  
11.18.   We frequently heard about digitalization in different presentations , we also heard it in the 
very important disaster preparedness informal discussion. We heard a ve ry informative presentation  
from the UK, so it seems that digitalization is not only a very important topic for the developing 
Members but also for developed Members. We can learn from each other  and so we think that it 
could be a very important topic in our Committee.  
11.19.   Referring to Canada's proposal regarding the Committee's work in response to COVID -19, 
digitalization is also a very powerful tool  there. When we think about digitalization not only is it a 
tool to respond to COVID, not only is it something for the future  preparation but it should be a very 
important topic for how to promote the TFA, not only in the present, and during the pandemic but 
also in the future. It is a very important topic for  all of us, so to have a focus sed discussion on this 
topic and share experiences , it could be something like a response to COVID some new steps to 
implement the MC12 statement. Based on my observation and understanding we look forward to 
close cooperation with other interested Members to continue to work on this area.  
12  OTHER BUSINESS  
12.1.  The Chair confirmed that the dates of the next Committee  meetings in 2023 were 15-16 June; 
and 3 -5 October. The Dedicated Session on Transit would  take place during the June mee ting and 
the Dedicated Session on Technical Assistance and Capacity Building Support would  take place on 
5 October.  
12.2.  The Committee agreed  to invite the Annex D organizations, as well as the Global Alliance on 
Trade Facilitation, to the next Committee  meetin g.  
12.3.  That concluded  agenda item 12.  
13  ELECTION OF CHAIRPERSON  
13.1.  The Chair indicated the following:  
13.2.  Regarding the e lection of Officers for 2023 -2024, the Rules of Procedure for meetings of the 
Trade Facilitation Committee establishes that the Committee on Trade  Facilitation shall elect a 
Chairperson from among the representatives of Members. The election shall take place at the first 
meeting of the year and shall take effect at the end of the meeting.  G/TFA/M/ 25 
 
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  13.3.  However, as the Chairperson of the Council for Trade in Good s is still holding consultations 
with Members on the slate of names to chair the CTG's subsidiary bodies, the nomination of a 
chairperson for this Committee for the coming year has not yet taken place.   
13.4.  I therefore propose to proceed as follows: as soon as there is consensus on a slate of names, 
the Secretariat will send an email with the name of the proposed Chairperson for our Committee. If 
no objection is received within the time -frame indicated in the email, the candidate will be deemed 
to have b een elected by the Committee by acclamation.  
13.5.  The Committee  so agreed . 
13.6.  The meeting was adjourned . 
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  ANNEX 11 
PRESENTATION BY THE SECRETARIAT – UPDATE ON RATIFICATIONS AND NOTIFICATIONS  
 
 
 
 
 
1 In English only.  
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