Post-Verification of Origin in New Southern Countries↓... Stabilization of Preferential Tariffs for Companies

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] Requests for post-verification of origin from New Southern countries have significantly decreased.

According to the Korea Customs Service on the 17th, the number of post-verification requests for origin from New Southern countries to the Korea Customs Service dropped by 86%, from 405 cases in 2018 to 57 cases in 2019.

In particular, the number of post-verification requests received from Indonesia during the same period decreased by 95%, from 374 cases to 19 cases.

Post-verification is a procedure in which the customs authorities of the partner country with which an FTA has been concluded verify the authenticity of the certificate of origin and whether the criteria for determining origin are met for export goods from our companies. The decrease in verification requests indicates that exporting companies are stably receiving preferential tariff benefits from the partner countries.

This change is interpreted as the effect of the agreement reached at the Korea-ASEAN FTA Implementation Committee held in Seoul last February to broadly recognize the "Direct Transport Certificate."

Before the recognition of the Direct Transport Certificate last year, the lack of supporting documents related to direct transport accounted for 53% of the reasons for post-verification requests, but after the agreement, it was confirmed to have drastically decreased to 3%.

Accordingly, the Korea Customs Service is holding meetings to support exporting companies trading not only with ASEAN but also with the EU, the United States, Turkey, and others, where FTA post-verification requests are frequent, by providing customized consulting such as the latest verification trends, verification cases, and response strategies to assist exporters.

In addition, to help our exporting companies stably receive FTA benefits overseas, the Korea Customs Service supports exporters through pre-verification of origin for export goods. Pre-verification is a system that allows our companies to confirm in advance whether the goods they export meet the criteria of being Korean-made according to the FTA agreement texts, in preparation for origin verification requests from partner countries of FTAs.

A Korea Customs Service official said, “We will resolve trade disputes between partner countries regarding origin verification through close bilateral and multilateral cooperation.”