The Minister of the Environment, Agriculture and Livestock Déo Guide Rurema hosted a press briefing on Tuesday, December 15, 2021, on the import of plants, pesticides and other regulated items as part of the electronic one-stop shop for foreign trade. Minister Deo Guide Rurema first recalled that the responsible and hard-working government is concerned about increasing agricultural production so that every mouth has food and every pocket has money.

Unfortunately, imports of plants including seeds, plant products and regulated items are often the cause of the introduction and spread of crop diseases and pests that significantly reduce agricultural production in quality and quantity when these exchanges are carried out without complying with the sanitary and phytosanitary requirements required for import, continued the minister.

He said that this is why he is informing the public that international trade in plants, plant products and pesticides is regulated and must be accompanied by documents that attest to their good phytosanitary status. He added that in order to facilitate these exchanges, documents that were previously issued manually on paper will now be delivered electronically in the electronic single window system.
The minister in charge of agriculture explained that since trade facilitation is currently a policy concern of governments around the world, including Burundi, it is within this framework that customs administrations have set up automated systems. The aim is to improve trade facilitation in order to effectively achieve their goals of collecting revenue, protecting society, and to provide data and information to governments to inform management and policy decisions.

Minister Rurema specified that various tools have been developed for this purpose by international organizations, in particular the Electronic Single Window (GUE). The latter is a computer instrument that allows the processing in electronic form of authorizations, permits, certificates or any other customs document issued by the competent State bodies. This instrument is provided for in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA) in its article 10.4.

In order for Burundi to move at the pace of other countries, the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock requested technical support from the Burundian Revenue Office (OBR) with funding from Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA) .and the contract for the execution of this work was concluded between the Burundian Revenue Office (OBR) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). It is in this context that an “import permit” document MOA module (Ministry of Agriculture) has been developed and is ready to be put into production under the GUE as of January 2022.

With regard to the advantages offered by GUEs: operators will only provide data once and in a single system; they will make it possible to ensure the security of the documents because the papers used can be falsified, which endangers the information on the documents and this may lead to illegal transactions with the entry into the territory of products dangerous to human, animal and plant health, and even national security; they will ensure good control of imports and exports; They will facilitate access to reliable statistical data on imports and exports on which decision-makers rely for decision-making.

Déo Guide Rurema also indicated that in order to access this tool, which will be implemented as of January 2022, each importer must first of all be registered at the Ministry responsible for agriculture in order to obtain the registration number that he will bring to the OBR to be authorized to enter the system.

The applicant for an import permit must therefore attach to his application the documents required for each category of products to be imported, such as the proforma invoice for the application for a permit to import plants, plant products and other regulated items, the certification certificate and, the authorization to open a point of sale (approval) in the case of pesticides. Given all these advantages mentioned above, Minister Rurema reminds all economic operators to adhere to this automated system in order to obtain permits to import plants, seeds, plant products and regulated items so that the country can comply with international standards and thus avoid the introduction of diseases that may harm agricultural production.