Certificate of Origin Circulars

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Certificate of Origin Circular No. 7/2006

Migration of Electronic Services of Certificate of Origin and Production Notification 
to Government Electronic Trading Services Platform

INTRODUCTION

This circular informs traders that the electronic services of Certificate of Origin ("CO") ¹and Production Notification ("PN") will be migrated to the Government Electronic Trading Services ("GETS") platform as from 1 July 2006.

DETAILS

2. As mentioned in Certificate of Origin Circular No. 5/2006 of 31 March 2006, Tradelink Electronic Commerce Limited ("Tradelink") started installation of an upgraded software supporting the GETS platform for its CO/PN customers on 1 April 2006. In the light of the enthusiastic response of traders to the software upgrade, we have decided that migration of the electronic services of CO and PN to the GETS platform will be implemented as from 1 July 2006.

3. Upon migration to the GETS platform as from 1 July 2006, applications sent other than in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) format will be rejected. Partially completed applications² sent on or before 30 June 2006 will also be rejected. Traders are required to re-submit such applications, using the upgraded software which supports the XML format.

4. Besides, upon migration to the GETS platform, the input function³ of Supplementary Information ("SI") through the Trade and Industry Department's Web Portal ("TID's Web Portal") in support of CO(CEPA) applications will be terminated and traders are no longer required to declare the related declaration code "CHI" ⁴.

5. For details in respect of the benefits of the migration and conditions/requirements for CO and PN, please refer to paragraphs 3 and 4 of Certificate of Origin Circular No. 5/2006 of 31 March 2006.

ENQUIRIES

6. Traders who have yet to start the upgrade may wish to contact Tradelink direct at 2106 5225 for arranging the upgrade as early as possible before 1 July 2006. For any enquiries relating to the submission of CO and PN, traders may contact Tradelink's Customer Service Hotline at 2917 8888.

7. Enquiries relating to the electronic services and processing of CO and PN may be directed to the Trade and Industry Department at the following telephone numbers :

Yours faithfully,

(Paul Shen)
for Director-General of Trade and Industry

²  Partially completed applications refer to the following :
  (a) for CO, those applications that are partly completed by either the manufacturer(s) (and the subcontractor(s), if any) or the exporter; and
  (b) for PN involving local subcontracting arrangement, those applications that are partly completed by either the manufacturer or the subcontractor.

³ To facilitate exporters in completing Traditional Chinese using Tradelink's services to submit CO(CEPA) applications with SI made before the migration, exporters can input the "Transaction Number" of SI to review the Chinese information so input through TID's Web Portal.

⁴ The declaration code "CHI" means "I declare that this electronic application and the supplementary information submitted through Trade and Industry Department's Web Portal, if existed, using the same Unique Certificate of Origin Reference (UCR) number are correlated with each other and are used to support the CO(CEPA) application, and that the supplementary information will form part and parcel of the CO(CEPA) application."