Kyoto Convention (Customs)

Contracting parties accepted a general body plus optional annexes covering procedures such as clearance for home use, temporary admission, customs warehousing, transit, free zones and drawback, each containing standards and recommended practices. Parties could enter reservations on individual standards, which limited uniformity. The 1999 Protocol of Amendment replaced it with the Revised Kyoto Convention, in force from February 3, 2006, which is now the reference text for customs procedures.

The original Kyoto Convention matters today mainly as the source of the shared customs vocabulary used worldwide, such as customs warehousing, temporary admission and inward processing. Those procedures let a 3PL hold goods without paying duty or bring display stock into a country temporarily. Knowing they come from a common treaty helps when comparing regimes across markets; for example, a bonded warehouse in Japan and a customs warehouse in the EU follow similar principles derived from the Kyoto annexes.

• Bonded WarehouseStorage where duty waits until withdrawal
• Foreign-Trade ZoneFTZUS area where duty is deferred

• Revised Kyoto Convention1999, in force 2006 · WCO blueprint for modern, simplified customs procedures
• Harmonized System Convention1983, in force 1988 · Treaty behind the six-digit HS product codes
• WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement2013, in force 2017 · WTO treaty to speed up and simplify border clearance

1. WCO: Revised Kyoto Convention wcoomd.org