IA – CEPA

Guides to the commencement of the IA – CEPA and other duty reductions

02 July 2020

On 24 June, we delivered a webinar to members of the CBFCA (now IFCBAA) which addressed, in part, the terms of the Indonesia Australia – Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (IA – CEPA) which is to commence on 5 July 2020, as well as the outcomes from the Australian Border Force (ABF) Goods Compliance Update from April 2020.

The full details of the ABF Goods Compliance Update can be found here.

During the webinar, we referred to draft versions of the Guides to the IA – CEPA issued for discussion purposes by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) and the ABF and promised to provide links to the finalised Guides and other explanatory material.

We can now provide the links to the Guides and related material and strongly recommend that members cross – check the final ABF and DFAT Guides against the material provided in the webinar slides which was based on the drafts of the Guides we then possessed.

• The ABF page on the IA – CEPA can be found here
• The ABF Notice 2020/27 can be found here
• The finalised ABF Guide can be found here
• The finalised DFAT Guide can be found here. This also includes examples of the form of the Certificate of Origin and Declaration of Origin to be used to claim preferential status.

The ABF has now also issued a new Notice (2020/26) setting out details of other tariff reductions, including under the WTO Expanded Information Technology Agreement and pursuant to the Japan Australia Economic Partnership Agreement (JAEPA). That new Notice can be found here.

As always, we recommend that those using the IA – CEPA and other preferential rates exercise care in using those preferences, failing which there could be exposure to liability to Infringement Notices, penalties or other prosecution.

Should you have any questions as to what the IA-CEPA means for your business, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the Customs and Trade team.

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