 Fish and fish products are strongly associated with international trade. More than 220 countries and territories report international trade in fish. It is also known that fish products usually have very long value chains. A given fish may be harvested in one country, processed in a second country and consumed in yet another. To support trade with the universal language and classifying products, we have the Harmonized System, which is managed by the World Customs Organization. Governments, the industry, international organizations, academia, market analysts, all use the Harmonized System codes to classify commodities and products. Having the codes helps the world community with crafting trade policy, deciding import duties, doing statistical analysis, or negotiating trade agreements for fish and fish products. Whether in domestic or international markets, the use of the Harmonized System codes is vast and widespread. Using the common language to generate your uniform data, information and analysis makes the Harmonized System code a fundamental tool in the daily operations by millions of importers, exporters, traders and distributors. And by allowing for more detailed data, the use of the codes adds to transparency in international trade. To correctly classify all possible products globally, the Harmonized System code is a cream-based system of classification. It is easily understood by regular users, but it may appear complex or complicated for beginners. To add to the complexity, fish, of course, is often one of the most complex commodities to classify. There is a multiplicity of species and processing methods creating additional diversity in the world. And this is why FAO Globefish has developed with the support of the World Customs Organization the handbook called Harmonized System codes for fish and fish products. This publication aims to facilitate fish and fish product classification and enhance the understanding of the Harmonized System. The FAO publication presents all possible classifications for fish and fish products by species with a full description of each code to facilitate the use. For this publication, FAO contributes to disseminating an essential tool managed by the World Customs Organization to allow for a better understanding of the classification of fish and fish products worldwide. Spreading the knowledge about classification of products can improve producer's participation and increase the export value to producers and processes, creating thereby a more inclusive and integrated international value chain of fish and fish products. So happy trade, happy trade with products correctly classified. Thank you. Greetings all. My name is Gail Gruby. I'm the Deputy Director of Tariff and Trade Affairs at the World Customs Organization, the WCO. My particular charge is the Harmonized System. So that is the international classification system used as the basis of nearly all customs tariffs. I've been asked to say a few words about how the hierarchy of classification works in the Harmonized System, the HS. As part of the introduction to this exceptional new FAO publication, HS codes for fish and fish products. I must say when I was asked to explain this in five minutes instead of over, say, five hours, I did actually wonder if it was possible, but I will do my best to try and encapsulate some of the main points. Before we begin looking at the classification levels in terms of headings and subheadings, I should start with the fact that the HS classification occurs with an instruction framework. And the framework starts with the general rules for the interpretation of the Harmonized System, generally simply referred to as GIRs. And the GIRs are a set of six rules which govern how you can legally classify within the HS. The first one, the GIR one sets out the legal elements for classification, one of which is of course the GIRs themselves. Another element, the legal element that must be followed in classification is the notes. Now when we refer to notes in this context, we are talking about the legally binding notes that occur at the start of some sections and chapters within the HS. I say legally binding because if these notes affect the classification of your goods, you are legally obliged to apply them. The next one is the terms. And this is the final three elements. And terms are simply the descriptions you read when you go through the HS or customs tariff based on the HS. And GIR one also tells us that we start classification at the heading level for digits first. So here are the first few four digits headings of chapter three. We know the headings because they do have four digits. We know that for chapter three because they start zero three. And these words that come after them are the terms of the headings. So the process here of course is to go through and check the terms along with the notes and the GIRs as needed to find the correct heading for your goods. So for example here we know there is a note that requires the fish to be fit for human consumption. We have another heading whose terms we have to check out to find out exactly what it does not include. In this case it does not include fillets or fish meat whether or not mince that are included in the terms of heading 0304. Once you have the heading level, you have the first level of classification. You then go down to the five digit level. And now this can be a little bit confusing because these five digit numbers are not actually written in the HS. They do exist but implicitly rather than explicitly. So if we're referring to this particular subheading or the mental fish, we would refer to it at 03011. But you would not necessarily see that written. Okay now with these five digit subheadings, they belong to a specific heading. So when we're looking for the correct subheading at five digits, we can only compare subheadings that belong to the same family. Now I've chosen the subheadings of 030101 because it is actually a very simple one. There's only two. It's easy to fit on a screen. So we'll say we're importing live fish. So now at the five digit subheading level, we have two choices, ornamental fish or other live fish. In this case because we're reading this in conjunction with 03011, we know other means fish other than the live fish that are in 0301. So other than ornamental fish. It's not always quite that easy to read them of course. This is one of the reasons I chose 0301. For example here I've highlighted in red all of the five digit subheadings that belong to 0303. So 03031, 03032 and so on down to 03039. Regardless of how many they are, you need to look at them as a family because they all belong to the same heading. Now when we have the five digits, we then go on to the six digits. So 03011 in this case and 030119 other because we've said okay we've got ornamental fish. And again we have two choices and we compare these two to see which is the applicable choice. Whether it's fresh water or other than fresh water. So with this you can't start at this end, 030119 other doesn't make much sense. But because we've gone down the heading then the five digit before we get to the six digit we know that this means live fish of heading 0301 that are ornamental. So under subheading 03011 but which are not fresh water which would fall under sister or sibling subheading 03011. So we now know what the other means we have a full picture. And of course if you were working in a domestic tariff that went beyond six digits you'd do the same process again for seven digits and then you'd repeat it again for the eight digits under that seven digits. And so on until you came to the final level. Now the biggest takeout from all of this is that you can't start classification from the bottom up. Any six digit subheading belongs to hierarchy of provisions. It belongs to one specific five digit first level subheading. One specific heading. Now if either the heading or the first level subheading does not apply to the goods then the six digit classification is wrong. Regardless of whether the six digit terms actually seem correct. So for example here we have two six digit subheadings they refer to different products. Exactly the same terms we have to know to which five digit subheadings these belong before we can find out which is the correct one. Now we went through the simplest example in chapter three and we talked a little about the complexity of making sure that you look at the different levels in order that you group them correctly and that you take into account the notes and any GIS it might apply. So with this I think it's a good time to appreciate the work of the FAO in producing the HS codes for fish and fish products. I think this publication will assist greatly in the everyday work of traders. And so personally I would thank the FAO for this correct classification and not only helps with statistics and monitoring and all of the other aspects of global policy. It actually helps protect traders from the penalties that can occur if they get an incorrect classification. So this is an extremely useful publication. I wish everybody happy classifying and once again congratulations to the FAO.