Who are the member states of the Central American Tariff System (SAC)?
I'm looking for a list of current members. If possible please also link an official page or website or your source.
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This was the first link in a google result: sice.oas.org/countries_e.asp... But upon closer inspection, that is just the OAS. Forgive the premature close...– Affable GeekOct 8, 2014 at 2:14
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I just want a list of countries which participate in the Central American Tariff System. To my knowledge, this is different from Mercosur or the OAS. It's a customs union implemented by some central American countries. I know El Salvador is a member, but I'm not sure which of the others.– Mark MicallefOct 8, 2014 at 4:46
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1 Answer
As far as I can tell the original members (of the 1984 Agreement on the Central American Tariff and Custom Regime) were Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The SAC (El Sistema Arancelario Centroamericano basado en la nomenclatura del Sistema Armonizado) is actually a part of this, see article 2 on p. 5. Part/chapter III of Agreement deals with the SAC (several articles), but the actual details (like the nomenclature and tariffs themselves) are relegated to Annex A, "Arancel Centroamericano de Importación", which also seems to have a web page on the web site of the Secretariat of the Central American Integration System, as well as a separate website that contains the actual schedules and some regulations.
Honduras acceded to the Agreement in 1992. There was a 2nd (1994) and 3rd protocol (1995), but the list of member countries has stayed the same for these.
This is actually the same group of 5 countries that is the "C" in CAFTA-DR (which additionally includes the US and the Dominican Republic). The same group of 5 also has an association agreement with the EU; this latter agreement was also joined by Panama.
My Spanish isn't terribly good, but it seems that in 2012 Panama signed a comprehensive agreement with the other Central American countries, which among other things obliged Panama to apply the Arancel Centroamericano de Importación, which is the aforementioned annex to the 1984 Agreement. So Panama didn't fully join the 1984 Agreement, which also covers other things (apparently a monetary union too), but essentially agreed to join/apply the SAC, at least.