Congo Brazzaville starts implementation of conformity assessment program

The Congo-Brazzaville Agency for Standardization and Quality (ACONOQ) has appointed Cotecna and Bureau Veritas as certification bodies for the Congolese Conformity Assessment Program (PCEC) for products exported to Congo. The PCEC was launched in October 2021 to ensure that products imported into the Republic of Congo comply with applicable standards before shipment, to avoid the entry into Congo of unsafe and substandard products. Regulated products will be rejected by Congo Customs unless accompanied by a Certificate of Conformity issued by an authorized conformity body.

To date, most of governments in Africa adopt conformity assessment programs to ensure that their consumers are protected from sub-standard products imported into their territory. This is done by delegating private-sector inspection companies in the country of the exporter for conducting checks on goods destined to their territory. If goods comply with standards set out in the country of import, a Certificate of Conformity is issued by the accredited private inspection company that is requested at their importation in the destination country.

Conformity assessment programs originate from Pre-Shipment Inspection (PSI) programs. PSI programs were adopted in the past by many developing and less developed countries in the world (including most of African States) mainly for revenue-protection purposes. Indeed, as in these countries revenues generated by Customs account for a substantial share of their total tax revenues, PSI were introduced to prevent undervaluation of imports and the consequent loss of customs duties and other levies applicable on such operations. PSIs were mainly conceived as a tool for compensating inadequacies in Customs in carrying out some of their control functions, by externalizing them to private inspection companies for a temporary period, pending the acquisition by Customs of the capacity needed to manage these functions autonomously. This is why all PSI contracts had usually a duration of maximum 5 years and included an obligation for the inspection company to transfer know-how and technology to Customs at their expiration.

However, this is not what happened in practice, because very often this obligation was not honoured, with the result that PSI programs were repetitively extended at their termination. In addition, PSI were accused of causing unnecessary delays to imports or unequal treatment of imported goods with respect to those that were nationally produced.

To avoid any discriminatory practice related to pre-shipment inspection activities, the World Trade Organization adopted in 1986 an Agreement on Pre-Shipment Inspection setting out the requirements and conditions for the use of such programs. In the meantime, starting from the late 1990s, some African countries initiated the conversion of their PSIs in Destination Inspection (DI) programs. Differently from PSIs, DIs shift the inspection of imported goods from the country of export to the country of import, at the moment of arrival of goods in their territory, and they are usually conducted by Customs for assessing the classification or the value of goods declared by the importer.

With the entry into force of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, WTO members have been allowed to continue to use pre-shipment inspections, on condition that they are not aimed at assessing the tariff classification and the value of goods (Article 10.5). The consequence is that African countries have replaced the existing PSIs with Conformity Assessment Programs aimed to verify in the country of export the quality and compliance to standards of goods imported in their territory (this is also the case of the Republic of Congo). Conformity Assessment Programs are often coupled, in some countries such as Cote d'Ivoire, with DI programs.