Introduction

SECTION ONE: GCC Guide for Control on Imported Foods
Section Two: Procedures for importing, exporting and clearing consumer goods (trade - specifications)
Section Three: Standardizing procedures for importing and exporting drug commodities
Section Four: Procedures for importing, exporting and clearing goods subject to veterinary and agricultural quarantine

Based on the decision of the Supreme Council in its thirty-second session (Riyadh, December 19 and 20, 2011 AD), a Committee for the Customs Union of the GCC States was established, and its work would start on June 1, 2012, authorizing the Financial and Economic Cooperation Committee to approve its internal system.

Among the tasks assigned to this Committee of the Customs Union is the standardization of customs procedures, ensuring the application of specifications and standards, agricultural and veterinary quarantine, and monitoring of counterfeit and falsified goods at the first entry points. Procedures that are applied in the first outlets with the outside world shall not be repeated in the intersections. Role of the Customs at the intra-GCC States borders shall be restricted to implementing procedures that were not performed at the first entry points.

In the third meeting of the Customs Union Committee (Bahrain, 16-17 March 2013 AD), a number of working groups emanating from the Committee were formed to hold joint meetings with government agencies that have a relationship with the entry of goods. The Committee also work at the ports alongside customs separately, to set up mechanisms necessary to unify these procedures in all the first entry points in the GCC countries, and to recognize the measures taken by those authorities at any first entry point by the rest of the member states.

In the ninety-eighth meeting of the Financial and Economic Cooperation Committee (Kuwait, May 7, 2014 AD), the Committee decided to approve the procedures that had been agreed upon by the technical committees formed from representatives of the Customs Union Committee with the participation of representatives from the ministries of commerce and the bodies responsible for importing food and medicine and from the Standardization Committee in the GCC countries. The Committee would set the standard specifications for the rest of the commodities, and organize a unified guide thereof, to be approved by the Financial and Economic Cooperation Committee at its next meeting (September 2014), in preparation for its implementation in early 2015.

In the thirty-fifth session of the Supreme Council (Doha, December 9-10, 2014) the Council decided to approve what had been recommended by the Financial and Economic Cooperation Committee at its ninety-eighth and ninety-ninth meetings to standardize the requirements and procedures of imported foreign goods at the first entry points for food and medicine and standard specifications for the rest of the goods, and also to organize a unified directory thereof.

With the grace of God Almighty, the requirements for clearing imported foreign goods through the first entry points in the GCC Customs Union have been collected within this document for guidance by customs officials and other relevant government agencies and those involved in clearing imported foreign goods through the first entry points in the GCC countries for guidance in their work.

On this occasion, the General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council extends its sincere thanks and appreciation to all of the member states who contributed to the completion of this work, and hopes that it will achieve the desired purpose of preparing it.

God bless ,,,