Southern African Development Community (SADC) has officially launched a SADC electronic Certificate of Origin which is aimed at simplifying customs procedures and facilitate trade among member states.
The certificate of origin is an electronically processed and issued document by an issuing authority attesting that goods declared by an exporter conform to specific rules of origin.
Speaking during the launch in Blantyre, Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) Commissioner General, John Biziwick, said over the years, businesspeople and customs administrations have been processing the certificate manually by the issuing authority in the country of origin of the goods.
Biziwick said the development has been causing a lot of challenges such as delays, and overhead costs incurred by exporters.
Biziwick said: “The new SADC e-Certificate of Origin will, therefore, improve the way we conduct business in the region because the challenges that were associated with the manual processing of the certificate will no longer be order of the day.”
He further said the digital certificate will make life easier as exporters will no longer be required to physically go to the issuing authority for application and registration as these services will be accessed online.
He therefore said MRA will adopt the new digital certificate in order to improve Malawi’s ranking on the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) index which currently Malawi ranks 109 out of 190 countries in the world.
In his remarks, representative of the Executive Secretariat of SADC, Sadwick Mtonakutha, said the newly launched SADC electronic Certificate of Origin will achieve efficiency in terms of moving goods across the boarders at regional level and also contributing at continental level.
SADC Secretariat is implementing the SADC Electronic Certificate of Origin on a pilot phase in Eswatin, Zambia and here in Malawi before rolling it out to other member states by 2024.
Some of the delegates present at the launching ceremony were from Zambia, Eswatin, SADC Secretariat, EU and GIZ.
