International Certificate of Origin Guidelines: Facilitating trade through global origin procedures

Certificates of origin (COs) constitute one of the most important trade documents required by businesses, banks and customs officials to authenticate the origin of exported goods. Annually, miilions of certificates of origin are issued by chambers of commerce around the world.

Despite no significant changes to the rules of non-preferential origins in the past decade, customs procedures are fast changing in tandem with the emerging worldwide trends towards self-certification, greater delegation for the issue of preferential certifications of origins, blockchain technologies, and digitalisation. The term ‘digital origin statement’, in the future, will be used alongside ‘certificates of origin’ as more chambers are offering digital solutions for the application, issue and verification of their certificates of origin.

This revised edition:

• provides an overview of the latest COs developments, notably digitalization;
• deals with the issuing procedures for non-preferential COs;
• covers the determination and verification of origin;
• explains chamber’s involvement with preferential COs.

This edition also introduces the International Certificates of Origin Accreditation Chain, which was created in 2012 and is part of the commitment of ICC World Chambers Federation in its push for global harmonisation in the CO issue process.

This universal set of international procedures, supplemented with samples as well as best practice, is an indispensable and comprehensive guide for chambers wishing to guarantee their commitment to the highest level of quality, implementing transparent and accountable issuance and verification procedures.