An importer's first question is what a shipment will cost at the border. Most portals answer with tables copied from customs, which go stale. UNCTAD helps countries publish a calculator that asks the customs system itself: every charge, rate and exchange rate on the screen comes from the customs tariff service, live.
It is not a spreadsheet on a website. It is the customs tariff engine, put in front of the importer through a page any portal can embed.
Import duty is only the first line. A single shipment can carry nine charges, each with its own base, and the total is what the importer needs to price a sale, apply for credit or decide to ship at all.
The Trade Facilitation Agreement requires members to publish duty rates and make them available on the internet. In the 2025 United Nations survey, only 56 % of countries had fully done so. And a rate table does not tell an importer what nine charges on one shipment add up to.
A calculator built on copied tables quotes one figure and the declaration another. In August 2025 the Philippines withdrew its official calculator because it did not reflect all lawful charges. The importer learns the difference at the counter.
Where no reliable estimate exists, the question goes to a customs broker or an enquiry point, by phone, one shipment at a time. Some official calculators ask the importer to type the duty rate in.
The importer describes the shipment; the page sends one request to the customs tariff service and displays the answer. The screens are a recreation; the figures are real, returned by the Burundi Revenue Authority's service on 6 August 2026 for a shipment of paddy rice.
Three pieces, none of them a dependency on UNCTAD: a page, a relay, and a written record of how the customs service actually behaves.
Two UNCTAD prototypes, one codebase, two ways of reaching the customs service; and the customs administrations that already publish a calculator of their own. The prototypes are published as such; neither is the official portal of its government.
| Where | What is in operation | Since | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burundi | Calculator against the live tariff service of the Office Burundais des Recettes. Six charge lines reconciled to the franc against a real ASYCUDA declaration; ten defects reported to customs. | 2026 | Live calculator · Service status |
| Rwanda | The same code against the Rwanda Trade Portal, which relays to Rwanda Revenue Authority. Proves that a second country is configuration, not code. | 2026 | Live calculator · Rwanda Trade Portal |
| Rwanda Revenue Authority | Publishes the tariff-estimate specification of its ASYCUDA World service openly: 23 endpoints, no key required. The only written contract this family of services has. | public | ASYEnt Tariff Estimate API |
| Rwanda Trade Portal | The national calculator importers use, connected to the customs system. Its only reservation is the declared value, not the rates or the formula. | 2018 | Import Duties & Taxes Calculator |
| Jordan | Taxation simulation inside the customs ASYCUDA portal; the final figure is fixed on the date the declaration is registered. | n/a | Jordan Customs · JCAP |
| Jamaica | Duty estimator hosted in the customs ASYCUDA World portal, beside the online tariff and the reference tables. | 2020 | Jamaica Customs · JETS |
| Barbados · Gambia · Saint Lucia | Duty calculators served by the customs ASYCUDA World portal itself, next to exchange rates and the tariff. | n/a | Barbados · Gambia |
| Madagascar | eTariff: tariff consultation and a duty estimator published by the customs directorate. | 2024 | Direction générale des douanes |
| Philippines | The counter-example: the official calculator was withdrawn because it did not reflect all lawful charges and diverged from the assessment. | 2025 | Bureau of Customs |
The calculator creates no obligation; it discharges ones the country already has, and it falls under the mandate UNCTAD received in Geneva in October 2025.
Members publish applied rates of duties, taxes, fees and charges, and are encouraged to make them available through the internet. Ratified by 162 of 166 members.
Read the Agreement →Advance rulings are binding and written; an estimate is neither, and the page says so. Article 10.4 is the single window the calculator sits beside.
Read the Agreement →Standard 9.1: all relevant information readily available to any interested person. Standard 9.3: customs uses information technology to provide it.
See Chapter 9 →The catalogue the importer searches is the national tariff, built on the nomenclature 163 contracting parties share.
See the contracting parties →The single window, and the interoperability between systems that a portal asking the customs system is a minimal case of.
See Recommendation 36 →UNCTAD is to continue implementing ASYCUDA with member States and to support trade facilitation reforms, including the TFA, and access to trade-related information.
See the Geneva Consensus →Not a contractual promise: the order in which things work. Burundi took one month of one person; the rest is what turns a prototype into a service the country operates.
Nothing on this list can be supplied by UNCTAD. Four of the items are needed before a line of code is written; the rest can be worked on in phase 1.
ASYCUDA World with the tariff-estimate module enabled, or an equivalent service in the customs system.
The service is restricted by IP address and shared secret. Customs authorises the relay's address; without it nothing passes.
The calculator is built against test and switched to production with three configuration values.
The most valuable thing customs can share. It validates every charge line and exposes what no specification describes.
The calculator reports what it finds and does not work around it. Someone has to read the report.
The page shows what customs holds. If the rate is old in the system, it is old on the screen.
The trade portal, a single window, or a subdomain. The page embeds with one line and needs nothing installed.
That the figure is an estimate and the amount due is fixed at declaration. Every page carries it.
The answer depends on one thing: whether the customs system can be asked.
| Your customs system | What the calculator would be | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| ASYCUDA World, tariff-estimate service exposed | Exactly this: every figure from customs. Three configuration values and no code. The module is not always switched on; the first step is confirming it with the ASYCUDA team. | 10 weeks |
| Another system with a tariff or simulation service | The same page and relay, with an adapter that speaks the system's interface. The specification Rwanda publishes becomes the internal contract. | 14 – 18 weeks |
| No service to ask | Not a calculator. UNCTAD would propose a rate lookup from the published tariff, labelled as such, because a page that computes its own bill is the drift this product exists to end. | Separate scope |
No government decision is needed to start talking. Half an hour is.
Half an hour with customs and the portal operator, to learn which system answers and whether its tariff service is exposed.
With test credentials, the service is measured: required fields, declaration types, what changes nothing. The report is the country's, whatever it decides next.
Scope, timeline and budget in writing, subject to UNCTAD's mandates and to the resources available.
Writing commits you to nothing. This page is a basis for discussion and an invitation to express interest.
