December 10, 2006	Sunday	Ziqa'ad 18, 1427

ISLAMABAD, Dec 9: Pakistan will introduce amendments in more than 1,000 tariff lines in customs tariffs as part of compliance with new harmonized commodity description and coding system to be effective from January 1, 2007.

A senior customs official told Dawn on Saturday that the new coding system to be named HS-2007 version was related to goods nomenclature used by 121 contracting parties to the HS Convention as the basis for their customs tariffs and international trade statistics.

The 2007 version is the third major revision of the HS since its adoption by the World Customs Organisation (WCO) council in 1983 and its entry into force in 1988.

The official said that Pakistan would rationalise its tariff lines in accordance with the new version to reflect technological developments, take account of current trade practices, and clarify texts to ensure uniform application, cater for social and environmental concerns and assign code numbers.

The official said that since it would be a major exercise hence the amendments would be announced in the budget for the next fiscal year. Pakistan might introduce two more digits in its tariffs to further specify certain products, he added.

Pakistan has so far tariff lines up to eight digit level. Of these up to six digits were international, while the remaining two digits were developed at national level.

The HS is stated to be the language of international trade, as it also lends itself to many other uses, for example, in areas of trade policy, rules of origin, monitoring of controlled goods, internal taxation, transport tariffs, statistics, quota controls, economic studies and analyses.