The Second Meeting of the IPPC ePhyto Industry Advisory Group IAG) Held in Belgium

The Second meeting of the IPPC ePhyto Industry Advisory Group (IAG) met on 10 November 2016 in Brussels Belgium, including the members from various international plant and plant product industry associations. The objective and activity of the meeting were to provide advice to the IPPC Secretariat on the development of an ePhyto Solution.

The IAG is very supportive of the ePhyto project and supports the development of a data transfer Solution that is useful in both facilitating trade and integration of electronic systems that reduce the need for repetitive data entry. The IAG was provided with an overview of project progress to date including a detailed overview of the proposed Solution operation. The IAG was very interested in ensuring that tracking information associated with certificates exchanged by national plant protection organizations (NPPOs) should be available to industry so that they can have confidence that certificates have been exchanged.

The IAG discussed legal obligations for countries operating under the system and agreed to work with the Secretariat in finding appropriate options for facilitating ePhyto operation without the need for establishment of cumbersome individual country-country agreements for participation. Members supported further discussions on the establishment of a business model for supporting the operation of the Solution and suggested that once the pilot is operational further detailed discussions on costs and appropriate means of recovery of costs could take place. The IAG also noted that the operation of the Solution may require additional resources by countries while a business model is being developed and indicated their support for seeking donor funding.

In conclusion, members expressed that the progress on ePhyto has been very good and that the optimistic time frames for the project is encouraging but that achieving them may be difficult. They also agreed to meet again in June 2017 once the ePhyto pilot is being implemented.