NAFTA Certificate of Origin

The Joint Industry Group
1620 I Street, NW, Suite 615, Washington, DC 20006
Telephone (202) 466-5490 Fax: (202) 463-8498

January 14, 1998

Ms. Helena Stevens
International Trade Administration
US Department of Commerce
Herbert Clark Hoover Building
14^th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20230

Dear Helena:

I am pleased to have the opportunity to comment, on behalf of the Joint Industry Group (JIG), on possible changes to the NAFTA Certificates of Origin. The Joint Industry Group is a coalition of Fortune 500 companies, trade associations, manufacturers, importers, exporters, brokers, law firms and service providers, who share a common interest in trade facilitation. JIG was established in 1976 and has grown to 130 members representing more than $250 billion in trade. I am enclosing for your review a list of our current membership.

We have had no shortage of comments sent to our office following our request for suggestions. The following is a compilation of the comments we have received listed in no particular order:

Extend the approval date at the top right hand corner of the form from December 31, 1996, to December 31, 2008, since this is the date for final duty reductions.

Change the date format in Field 2. The existing dd/mm/yy format creates confusion because the tendency is to annotate the date as mm/dd/yy. As a result, the blanket period of eligibility can be misinterpreted on NAFTA claims by importers. The month should be written out in full alpha characters. Possible examples include: 01 January 1998 or, January 01, 1998.

Increase the maximum blanket period from the current one-year, to a more reasonable two years. Such an increase would reduce the cost and effort required in obtaining annual renewals from hundreds of vendors on thousands of part numbers.

Field 9 currently allows only two options, NO or NC. A third option, TV (transaction value) should be added to identify if the product qualified using a transaction value analysis.

Field 10 should be further harmonized and clarified for those goods produced in multiple NAFTA countries. It is not clear that all NAFTA parties accept the Marking Rules. The alternative of using each Party's tariff schedule again creates multiple rules for completion of this column, thus increasing the risk of non-compliance.

The instructions included with the NAFTA form do not indicate how the certificate should be completed for domestic sales/transactions. The advantage of obtaining a certificate from a domestic vendor is that you ensure that they have read and understood the NAFTA criterion and that they are not just certifying that the product was domestically sourced. The instructions should be re-worded to indicate which fields need to be completed in the event of a non-immediate export certificate, versus an actual export certificate. Conversely, the certificate fields may be re-named to indicate their actual meaning (i.e. consignor, consignee, etc.) which might be more applicable for domestic transactions.

Eliminate the requirement for a certificate copy to be filed with every entry. The certificate should be available upon request.

Eliminate the certificate requirement altogether. Allow the signed invoice to serve as the country of origin declaration.

We are pleased to have been able to contribute to this informal survey. The members of JIG are very interested in NAFTA issues and its expansion. Please call us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Jason Clawson