Charles Ocici
HABARI DAILY I Kampala, Uganda I Uganda secures the long-awaited product identifier commonly known as a barcode. This will enable it to identify its products on the Global market.
The GS1 barcode is the ISO globally accepted standard for identifying, capturing, and sharing product information among trading partners. GS1 barcodes such as EAN-13, UPC-A, GS1-128 DataMatrix are widely accepted and integrated into ISO Standards.
In 2018, the President issued a cabinet directive to Amelia Kyambadde, who was then the Minister of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives, to apply for a Country Barcode for the proper brand Identification of Ugandan manufactured products.
“The process kicked off in earnest. The ministry immediately moved and applied for accreditation into the global body with its headquartered in Brussels, Belgium,” reads part of a statement issued by the ministry of Trade.
It further said that it has taken the Country over seven years to achieve the GS1 global accreditation.
“In December 2023, Uganda fulfilled all the requirements to be admitted to this global body known as, and Uganda was assigned country prefix 605,” reads part of the statement issued by GS1 Global.
Our neighbors in the East African community, Kenya and Tanzania, have long been using country-specific product barcodes for their products, prefix 616 for Kenya and 620 for Tanzania.
“However, because Uganda was not a subscribing member, all Ugandan products going out into the international market were either being identified as Kenyan products or products from other countries that already had their Country-specific barcodes,” further reads the statement.
Globally, ISO/IEC 15459, ISO 16388, and other standards reference or are harmonised with GS1 systems, making GS1 the global benchmark for identification and tracking in global supply value chains.
All this information is fed into what is known as the Global Data Synchronisation Network Database, the largest product database in the world for sharing product information among trading partners and other stakeholders such as Governments.
Access to this database not only enables the proper identification and traceability of goods in the market but also enables Governments around the world to have regulatory oversight and compliance by receiving accurate product information in real-time, how products are performing in the market on a global scale.
Charles Ocici, the Enterprise Uganda Executive Director, said that when Ugandan coffee is exported to the international market, as a Country, we did not have a mechanism of monitoring that coffee.
“The major reason is that we did not have a Country-specific product prefix to identify our coffee in the global supply chain as having originated from Uganda,” he said in an interview yesterday.
Benefits
Some of the benefits for having a GS1 code is to ease traceability, Food safety, export compliance, supply chain efficiency, transparency, Farmer Inclusion, upon others.
GS1 helps in product classification and documentation for customs agencies to automate HS code mapping, declarations, and product validation.
It also ensures faster border clearance by providing real-time access to product data, which speeds up inspections and reduces delays at the port of entry.
It additionally facilitates the authentication and traceability of imported and exported goods.
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