CROWD ELEVATOR

Tariff Classification is one of the main areas of Customs Law and is crucial when imposing customs duties. Specific rules on classification can be found in HS Convention to which almost all the WTO Members (except Taipei) are party. HS consists of over 5000 commodity groups with a six-digit code. HS consists of:  (1) Chapter, Heading and Sub-heading Notes; and  (2) General Rules for the Interpretation (GIR) of the Harmonized System.  The first one which is Chapter, Heading and Subheading Notes is the main step to identify the product classification.  The second part, GIR provide certain principles to classify goods:  (i) incomplete or unfinished goods if they don’t have a proper line are classified as finished goods; (ii) when goods are prima facie classifiable under two or more headings, classification shall be effected as follows. (a) A heading that provides a more specific description is to preferred to the more general description; (b) mixtures, c...

Trade facilitation (TF)* deals with issues such as border infrastructure, customs procedures, non-tariff measures and other. In particular, the shipment process faces four types of procedures: commercial, transport, regulatory and financial. Each process can in turn increase the overall trade cost as it is delayed due to complicated non-transparent and sometimes costly procedures. Even worse is when such delays on every step happen chronically. This increases the costs so much that the firms become less competitive and may decide to slow down the trade flows. How does trade facilitation work in practice? Well, long delays at the border cause extra costs for the business in terms of losing a customer for future orders. The products might not arrive on time and the customer might not need it anymore or will reduce the price for the goods. If the goods being shipped are agricultural and/or perishable, they simply might not stay as fresh as they are and their value in terms of price pa...

Today I will start a series of articles about the World Trade Organization (WTO) based on my notes. I hope this will shed some light to those readers who know little about this particular organization and the world trade as a whole. The history of WTO starts after the World War II when along with other organizations, such as International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), International Trade Organization was about to be created, but instead a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed. So, GATT was signed by 23 nations in Geneva in 1947 and came in force on 1 January 1948. GATT was a de facto International Organization. WTO came into force on 1 January 1995. The WTO Secretariat is in Geneva, Switzerland and is headed by Director General. In total GATT/WTO held 9 negotiation rounds from 1947 to 1994. The main objective of negotiation rounds is to decrease trade barriers among the WTO Members. In chronological order those rounds are: 1) Geneva - April 1947 ...

Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan is an emerging union that is gaining more actuality and relevance in the post-Soviet territory with joining of additional countries as Armenia and Kyrgyz Republic. While it was seen as another not effective project of post-Soviet Union, it appeared to be a new-style project bringing tangible gain to its members and becoming a center of attention in the neighborhood and a viable alternative to the EU (Dragneva and Wolczuk, 2015). While some Central Asian countries as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyz Republic have been analyzing their costs and benefits by joining the EAEU, Caucasian countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) have been planning to join the EU.  Armenia is a small landlocked former Soviet Union country with population of around 3 million people. With an estimated per-capita GDP of US$ 3,619, Armenia is a lower middle-income country. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Armenia experienced a difficult...

Recently Institute of Public Policy and Administration of University of Central Asia (IPPA-UCA) and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) launched the online mapping tool named Kyrgyzstan Spatial (www.kyrgyzstanspatial.org). This application tool is a good way to see the socio-economic and food security situation in Kyrgyzstan. One may view the data on the map and see the regional differences in different sectors on national and sub-national level across time. 

 "Чисто не там, где убирают, а там, где не сорят" Каждый день я наблюдаю как мусороуборочная машина забирает кучу скопившегося за сутки мусора с нашего двора. В выходные дни мусора обычно больше, а в праздничные, так это просто тихий ужас. Общество и СМИ постоянно критикуют то наше "уважаемое" правительство, то депутатов, то порой и Президента страны за то, что сами же можем и контролировать. Казалось бы, на сколько чище было бы жить, если бы каждая семья сортировала мусор на органический и неорганический прежде чем выбросить его в мусорный бак. Но мышление и культуру народа не так легко поменять. Человека, бросающего все в одну корзину довольно сложно заставить потратить дополнительное время, чтобы раскидывать мусор по разным корзинам, ровно как и того, который привык его разделять. Всему есть цена. При установлении какой суммы выплат (административных штрафов) возможно заставить человека поменять свои привычки по культуре сортирования мусора? Сколько же ...

Globalization has always been a topic of hot debates. As from Kyrgyzstan’s perspective, I think that globalization here may have had a twofold effect. While the membership in World Trade Organization (WTO) has had some benefits, the dilemma for today is about the costs and benefits for Kyrgyzstan after its possible accession to the Customs Union (CU), consisting of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russian Federation. It is the most recent trade policy change in the region of Central Asia. Whether joining the CU will be a further step for Kyrgyzstan to better integrate into the global economy or will derive from globalization creating protectionist regional economic block is a matter of time. Kyrgyzstan is one of the five Central Asian post-Soviet countries. Since the collapse of the USSR and after gaining its independence, Kyrgyzstan actively started to integrate into the global economy by signing the bilateral agreements with countries and becoming a member of several preferential trade ...