Upcoming changes in Mexico take effect June 3, 2019
The Mexican government has announced changes to their external commerce rules. This news comes from the Official Journal of the Federation (Diario Oficial de la Federacion, DOF) dated Oct. 23, 2018, and an amendment dated Feb. 28, 2019. The changes affect every applicant that needs to import products into Mexico and will have the following impact on customers and importers:
- All products entering the country via business-to-business (B2B) commercialization scheme must comply with the standard named by the Harmonized System (HS) code to be imported into Mexico. This will result in the need to apply for either a Norma Oficial Mexican (NOM) Certificate of UL-Mexico Certificate of Compliance (CoC) prior to shipping B2B products into Mexico after June 3, 2019.
- Applicants with highly specialized equipment (HSE) dictums have no piece shipment limitation.
- NOM-208 will be mandatory at customs.
What’s being changed
Specifically, the Annex 2.4.1 of the External Commerce Rules has been amended to include the following changes:
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- The B2B exemption will be removed, and NOM will be applicable as of June 3, 2019 per DOF dated Feb 28, 2019
- The 25 item limit per shipment for highly specialized equipment is no longer valid per DOF dated Oct. 23, 2018
- Several HS codes that were referencing the old telecom standard, NOM-121, have now been updated to reference the current NOM-208-SCFI-2016 standard
- This change is not retroactive, therefore everything officially confirmed under NOM-121 will remain valid; however, any updates to the certificate will require the certification organization to update the IFT compliance certificate from NOM-121 to NOM-208.
- When submitting the official confirmation request to the Mexican Federal Telecommunications Institute (Instituto Federal De Telecomunicaciones, IFT), a new official approval certificate with a new number will be issued; however for marketing purposes, you can keep the original certificate number referenced on the label.
- This update is already enforce per the DOF dated Oct. 23, 2018.
How UL can help
UL is in position to help customers and importers into Mexico in the following ways. We can:
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- Assess the product in order to apply the appropriate certification scheme (NOM or UL-Mexico CoC) before it takes effect June 3, 2019.
- Grant the certification for products into the appropriate certification scheme before it takes effect June 3, 2019.
- Issue technical opinion letters to declare a product is out of the scope of a particular standard. This document is used by the customer to get an official dictum from the General Standardization Direction (Dirección General de Normas, DGN).
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The UL Mexico CoC will be only possible for two standards as follows:
For NOM-019 recognition process
For NOM-001 recognition process
NOTE: UL Mexico CoC doesn’t allow NOM or UL MX logos to be placed in the label of the product or anywhere else.
Summary
Those products that are exempt of certification by letter until now, e.g., B2B, professional products, must be certified to enter into the Mexican market starting June 3, 2019.
Those products previously certified and officially approved per NOM-121 remain valid but should comply with the new regulation after their expiration date and/or when requiring any update.
The new versions of Mexican NOM-019 and NOM-001 standards that are currently in draft have not been published as of the time of this message. Therefore, the UL-Mexico CoC route remains a valid option. Once the new NOM standards are published, the UL-Mexico CoC route will no longer be a viable option and customers will have to revert back to NOM. However, it is important to note that there is no current timeline for the publication of the new standards. UL is actively monitoring this situation and will notify impacted customers once additional information is received.
References:
DOF dated 2018-10-23 (Regulation scope extended and updated per 10th article from Annex 2.4.1)
DOF dated 2019-02-28 (Effective date postponed per 5th transient of the Annex 2.4.1)