Subcontractor's declaration is essential for maintaining adequate control over the origin of goods. A new version PN was introduced with effect from 18 August 1998 and contain a subcontractor's declaration box. However, for other textiles products which need not be covered by PN, subcontractor's declaration will be required for the EL application if subcontraction of the principal manufacturing process is involved. Another new feature is that the new PN will contain a subcontractor's declaration box to enable the subcontractor which carried out the principal manufacturing process to make a declaration. The simplified PN form will make PN application much more user-friendly and will save traders the time in preparing the document.
Traders are free to do so.
However, CO is a Customs clearance requirement imposed by the EU and so cannot be lifted unilaterally. The CO requirements for export to the EU will therefore remain unchanged. The lifting of US CO requirement is mainly to streamline the documentation requirement. There is no change to the CO criteria or origin rules to the garments products. Under the new arrangement, each export licence could at most be supported by 5 PNs.