WAEMU facilitates origin determination by aligning to HS 2022

• By the end of 2022, all WAEMU members had adopted HS 2022 thanks to WCO support.
• The WAEMU Treaty, however, provided a list of goods approved as originating based on earlier editions of the HS, undermining the effective application of preferential treatment and traders' compliance.
• The recent alignment of the list with HS 2022 will prevent the misapplication of rules of origin, facilitate origin determination and allow Customs to enhance risk assessment and origin management, thereby helping to ensure accurate revenue collection.

The Commission of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), with the technical and financial support of the EU-WCO Rules of Origin Africa Programme, engaged in a year-long technical assistance exercise in 2025 to update the tariff codes of approved originating products benefiting from preferential treatment. The work was concluded during a regional workshop held from 4 to 8 May 2026 in Lomé, Togo, which validated the correlation table showing how products under the WAEMU preferential regime are classified under the HS 2017 and HS 2022 editions.

Updating free trade agreements in response to changes in the HS is critical

Goods classification and origin determination are closely interlinked. Typically, the requirements for determining origin are specified for individual products or product categories identified according to their respective Harmonized System (HS) codes. The classification of goods is therefore of the utmost importance in establishing which rules of origin (RoO) apply to a good. Moreover, in many cases, the RoO to be applied will refer to a change in tariff classification (CTC) at chapter, heading or subheading level, a criterion that requires the correct classification of both the final manufactured product and the input materials used in its production.

Since 2002, the WCO HS Nomenclature has been revised every five years to take account of changes in technology and patterns of international trade. Any update of the Nomenclature should therefore be accompanied by an update of the RoO, including those set out in trade agreements. Ensuring consistency between the structure of the HS and the RoO would prevent the misapplication of RoO, facilitate origin determination and allow Customs to enhance risk assessment and origin management, thereby helping to ensure accurate revenue collection.

Still, in some countries, different editions of the HS are used for HS classification and origin determination respectively as a consequence of HS amendments, making origin determination complicated and time-consuming. If the latest edition of the HS is applied for classification purposes while an older edition is used for origin determination, goods have to be classified twice: once using the latest edition of the HS for classification purposes and again using the older edition for origin determination.

The issue is particularly relevant for free trade agreements (FTAs). Following an HS amendment, a product may no longer fall within the range of subheadings indicated in an FTA as being eligible for preferential tariff treatment, or it may fall under a revised origin criterion. The process can also affect existing CTC rules, meaning that HS-based CTC rules must likewise be updated.

Aligning the list of products covered by the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) Treaty with HS 2022

Signed in 1994, the Treaty on the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) establishes a common external tariff among its eight parties: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. It sets out rules of origin for governments and trade operators to determine "originating products" and provides a list of products approved since the late 1990s.

Since the end of 2022, all parties to the WAEMU have been using HS 2022 as the basis for their Customs tariffs and statistical nomenclatures, thanks to support provided by the WCO through a European Union-funded programme entitled "Harmonizing the classification of goods based on WCO standards to enhance African trade".

In 2024, recognizing the need to align the list of WAEMU-approved products with HS 2022, the WAEMU Commission requested technical and financial support from the WCO under the EU-WCO Rules of Origin Africa Programme. During a meeting in June 2024, it was agreed to establish a restricted working group tasked with developing a correlation table showing how approved products under the WAEMU preferential regime are classified under the HS 2017 and HS 2022 editions.

Outcome and way forward

The group commenced its technical work in April 2025 and reviewed a total of 8,015 products covered by preferential treatment (known as "approved" products).

Technical outcomes include:

• the updating of tariff codes for 965 products requiring alignment with HS 2022 amendments;
• technical corrections to product files containing tariff classification errors; and
• the validation of the correlation table for approved products.

The group's work was reviewed and validated during a regional workshop held from 4 to 8 May 2026 in Lomé, Togo, which brought together Customs and industry experts from WAEMU Member States specializing in the HS and rules of origin, alongside representatives of the WAEMU Commission and the WCO.

At the conclusion of the workshop, experts reaffirmed the importance of maintaining accurate and up-to-date tariff references to support the effective implementation of WAEMU rules of origin and ensure continued access to preferential treatment.

With Customs administrations worldwide required to adapt their national nomenclatures to a new edition of the HS by January 2028, the parties to the WAEMU and the WAEMU Commission must now work towards updating national and WAEMU tariff codes, as well as the list of approved originating products, to the HS 2028 edition.

I don't think it matters that Guinea-Bissau joined later (1997) - it would be worse to leave it out.