Goods made entirely in a particular country are considered to be from that country. The only condition is that, in a given country, only production is carried out: (k) any information which, by its nature, is confidential or which is provided confidentially for the application of the rules of origin, is treated strictly confidentially by the relevant authorities, who will not disclose it without the express permission of the person or government providing this information. unless it may be necessary to be disclosed in the course of a court proceeding. The WTO agreement provides for the creation of an original committee in which Member States will consult issues relating to the implementation of the agreement. This committee and a technical committee of the rules of origin of the World Customs Organization (WCO) were tasked with developing a permanent and harmonized set of product-specific rules of origin, applicable to all trade in goods – with the exception of preferential trade – between WTO members. (Preferred trade is trade within free trade zones or other regional trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement or trade preference programs such as the generalized preference system.) Both committees are still working on this project. Once completed, exporters can accurately determine the criteria of origin applied to their product lines when exporting to a WTO member country. The ROO agreement contains important disciplines for the implementation of preferential and non-preferential regimes, such as the obligation to grant binding decisions of origin to economic operators within 150 days of the application. The ROO agreement not only defines the disciplines relating to the management of rules of origin, but also provides for a work programme leading to the multilateral harmonisation of rules of origin for non-preferential trade. In the Rules of Origin Agreement, WTO members agreed to negotiate harmonised non-preferential rules of origin. As a result of this `harmonization programme`, all WTO members would apply identical rules of origin for all non-preferential purposes (rules of origin applicable in regional and preferential trade agreements would not be harmonised).
However, these negotiations are not yet complete and not all WTO members apply original requirements for non-preferential purposes. See technical information about rules of origin. 1. Each member submits to the secretariat, within 90 days of the ENTRY into force of the WTO agreement, its rules of origin, its judicial decisions and its general administrative decisions concerning the rules of origin applicable on that date. If no rule of origin is provided for by the non-accident, the member concerned sends them immediately after the announcement of this situation. The information received by the Secretariat and made available to the Secretariat is communicated to members by the Secretariat. The supervisory authorities are, in principle, the customs authorities of the importing countries, unless otherwise stated. This is because origin control must be carried out in the country of import when goods arrive at the port of entry in order to determine (preferential) tariffs on the lot under its customs legislation.
