Mozambique Conformity Assessment Programme (CAP) – What it is and can you help?

The Mozambique government has published plans to introduce a new Conformity Assessment Programme. If this works as advertised, the importing of the goods that are listed in the CAP could be eased, offering a faster and more efficient way to import these goods into Mozambique. A product on the list would need a Certificate of Conformity (CoC). This would be available for a fee (so far there is no indication of how much this fee would cost). This fee would then be in addition to any relevant tariffs, and an extra cost which the importer has to face. There are some interesting exemptions – one is for “postal parcels”. This seems to imply that ecommerce goods would be exempt (but does this mean that the national postal offices must be the carrier, or can “postal parcels” also apply to courier deliveries?). If you are involved in exporting to Mozambique, or operating an ecommerce site there please contact me. We need to assess the potential effect of this new policy ([email protected]).

In our view the CAP and its CoC is clearly a money generator, and provides new jobs for customs officers employed by the CAP programme, probably to compensate the reduction/removal of tariffs. The proposed CAP implies that it is a sort of pre-clearance mechanism, but that needs to be clarified – unfortunately there is no reference to e-documentation, which would be preferred. The policy is also not very clear in many different aspects  – is the CoC awarded before shipment or at the border? If the latter the whole programme is likely to become just an additional (costly) delay at the border posts. Wherever the CoC was awarded, it would increase the costs faced by exporters into Mozambique.