The Argentine Republic and Sri Lanka have initiated electronic phytosanitary certification for the export and import of all their products and by-products of plant origin, Senasa reported on Friday (07.08.2020/XNUMX/XNUMX).
Now This Asian island country joins the use of Electronic Phytosanitary Certificate (e-Phyto), which in our country is issued by the National Service of Health and Agri-Food Quality (Senasa), in the exchange of these products that Argentina already carries out with Chile and the United States. It is a tool that promotes international trade in regulated articles of plant origin in an easy, transparent, reliable, digital and paperless manner.
"While ships take approximately 40 days to transport goods from one country to the other, the electronic phytosanitary certificate arrives in seconds and eliminates the use of paper in the export and import of these products between both countries," he explained. Diego Quiroga, National Director of Plant Protection at Senasa.
The development of the “e-Phyto System” is an initiative of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) that encourages its implementation by the National Plant Protection Organizations (NPPO) of the contracting countries.
With the implementation of this tool, an exporting NPPO – for example Senasa – can transfer e-Phyto certificates through a secure system to the “Hub” (central IPPC certificate exchange system) which transfers the certificate to the “mailbox” of the importing country in the Hub, from where it can be retrieved by the NPPO of the importing country.
The Hub requires all countries participating in the e-Phyto certificate exchange to use a standardized messaging system for the transmission and retrieval of electronic certificates. This eliminates the need for multiple bilateral access agreements and allows all countries that wish to participate.
Argentina leads the e-Phyto implementation process worldwide, and three months ago, together with Chile, it carried out the first exchange of certificates of this type. There are many countries in the process of joining electronic certification, which, among other benefits, eliminates the use of paper, which favors environmental protection.
So far this year, Senasa has certified exports to Sri Lanka of mung beans, coriander and chickpeas, while it has also registered the import of coconut fiber, cinnamon bark and tea leaves.
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