Since the 7th CD meeting in Peru in 2008 where the report of the Virtual Working Group on GHS (VWGGHS), “Developing Clarity and Consistency in the Implementation of the Globally Harmonised System for the Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS)” was endorsed, the participating APEC Economies provided GHS implementation Reports detailing the progress of GHS implementation in their respective Economies on an annual or biennial basis.
Over the past decade, these reports identified that foreshadowed trade benefits from GHS implementation were not yet fully realized due to divergent implementation of GHS across the regions. The divergences in GHS implementation include:
- Adoption of different revisions of GHS, given the UN GHS committee updates the Purple Book biannually.
- Adoption of different building blocks,
- Adoption of different concentration cut-offs for classification of mixtures for some building blocks, and
- Imposition of specific local requirements.
At the 21st Chemical Dialogue (CD) meeting in Papua New Guinea in 2018, the CD agreed to a new reporting mechanism on GHS implementation, focused on identifying strategies to improve GHS convergence by Member Economies. The CD also supported trialing the new reporting form, the GHS Implementation Survey (the Survey), out of session, with a view to providing an annual executive summary to the Ministers Responsible for Trade (MRT).
At the CD29 meeting in Thailand, the Survey report and Executive summary for 2022 were tabled. Both documents were endorsed by the CD and submitted to the CTI annual report to ministers.
This Report summarises the CD delegates’ input into the Questionnaire. Respondent economies:
- Australia,
- Hong Kong, China,
- Indonesia,
- Japan,
- The Republic of Korea,
- Malaysia,
- New Zealand,
- Peru,
- The Republic of the Philippines,
- The Russian Federation,
- Singapore,
- Chinese Taipei
- Thailand
- United States of America, and
- Viet Nam
Download: 2022 APEC CD GHS Implementation Convergence report