Form GE is the preferential certificate of origin under the China–Georgia Free Trade Agreement. The form prints as Certificate of Origin Form for China–Georgia Free Trade Agreement; on the China export declaration the agreement is code 20 and the certificate type is GE. China Customs or CCPIT issues it in English on a 14-box form, and Georgia’s Revenue Service takes it at the border. Georgia zeroed out duty on 9,955 tariff lines — 96.5% of its schedule — the day the agreement took effect. Whether that shows up in your landed cost comes down to two things: the tariff line your broker declares, and whether the goods actually clear the origin rule. Below: who can file, when it has to be issued, how the one-year clock runs, what a retroactive certificate does to your entry, and what Georgian customs keeps checking.
Form GE — printed on the form as Certificate of Origin Form for China–Georgia Free Trade Agreement — is a preferential certificate of origin. It is issued by China Customs at the port of export or by CCPIT and its local branches, and it does one job: certify that the goods meet the China–Georgia origin rule so your Georgian customs broker can declare the agreement rate instead of MFN. In the trade it is called Form GE or simply the GE certificate; the letter is shorthand, while 20 is the number that goes on the declaration.
It is not a zero-duty coupon. Georgia runs three duty bands — 0%, 5% and 12% — and roughly nine lines in ten already sit at zero for everybody. On those lines the certificate buys you no duty difference at all; it still matters for the contract, the letter of credit and the origin trail your broker has to hold. On the 5% and 12% lines it is real money. And it does not touch Georgia’s 18% VAT, which is assessed on imported goods at the same rate as domestic ones, on a base that includes duty. Excise, where it applies — tobacco, alcohol, passenger cars, fuel, tires — is untouched too.
Who files: the exporter or the manufacturer, or an agent holding a signed power of attorney; the certificate always carries the shipper’s or maker’s name, never the forwarder’s. When: before or at the time of shipment, valid one year from issue. If that window was missed, the certificate can still be issued retroactively, within one year of the shipment date, with the bill of lading behind the request. Cost: the issuing office charges no visa fee; you pay the agent’s service fee, per certificate.
Two facts frame this certificate. The agreement has been in force since January 1, 2018, and it gave Georgia’s importers a zero-duty column on almost the whole tariff — immediately, not on a phase-in schedule. That is unusual, and it is why this certificate is often worth more than its paperwork suggests.
China and Georgia signed the free trade agreement in May 2017; it took effect on January 1, 2018. It was the first free trade agreement China concluded after the Belt and Road initiative was launched, and the first between China and a country in the Eurasian region. Trade has grown with it: USD 2.26 billion in 2024 and about USD 2.7 billion in 2025, up 19.5% year on year. China ships electronics, household appliances, vehicles, furniture, plastics and steel articles; it buys ferro-alloys, copper and precious-metal ores and concentrates, and wine.
On the Georgian side the tariff arithmetic is simple. Georgia applies three duty rates — 0%, 5% and 12% — and under the agreement China got zero duty on 9,955 lines, 96.5% of the schedule, covering 99.6% of the value Georgia imports from China, all of it from entry into force. In the other direction, China zeroed 7,781 lines, 93.9% of its schedule, of which 7,529 came down at once and 252 over five years. That is why Georgian wine and ore concentrates have become cheaper to land in China — and why the form is now a routine document rather than an exotic one.
The filing rules sit in two places. GACC Announcement No. 61 of 2017 published the Measures on the Administration of Origin for Import and Export Goods under the China–Georgia Free Trade Agreement, effective January 1, 2018, and its Annex 2 is the certificate itself: 14 boxes, completed in English. The Measures on the Administration of Certificate of Origin Visas for Export Goods (GACC Order No. 270, in force September 1, 2024) govern acceptance, review, retroactive issuance, amendments and certified copies. On the declaration, the agreement is code 20 under Announcement No. 34 of 2021. Since January 1, 2020 the two customs administrations exchange certificate data electronically (Announcement No. 198 of 2019), so a certificate filed in Shenzhen can be matched against the entry in Poti without anyone mailing a copy.
Origin is decided one of three ways. Wholly obtained or produced in China. Produced entirely from originating materials. Or, using non-originating materials, the goods pass the product-specific rule for their heading in Annex 1 — a tariff classification change, a value test, or a stated process — and where the heading carries no specific rule, the fallback threshold is a regional value content of at least 40%. Annex 1 is tight on live animals, meat, dairy, processed foods, natural rubber and cotton; most industrial goods fall to the 40% line.
Two details on the value calculation separate people who know this agreement from people who do not. The base is the ex-works price, not FOB: (EXW price − value of non-originating materials) ÷ EXW price × 100. Run the FOB version — the habit carried over from other agreements — and the percentage comes out high enough to pass a test the goods were never going to pass. And the value of non-originating materials is taken under the WTO valuation rules, including freight and insurance, with materials of undetermined origin counted in full.
Around those rules sit the allowances. Cumulation: Chinese material used in Georgia counts as Georgian, and Georgian material used in China counts as Chinese. De minimis: where a classification change is missed, non-originating materials up to 10% of the ex-works price are disregarded. Sets: a set is still originating if its non-originating parts are no more than 15% of the set’s price. Minimal operations: the measures list seventeen of them — preserving, simple assembly and disassembly, repacking, washing and descaling, ironing, simple painting and polishing, husking and polishing grain, sweetening and moulding sugar, peeling and pitting fruit, sharpening and simple cutting, screening and grading, bottling and canning, labelling, simple mixing, dilution, and anything done only to get cargo through a port. Doing those does not create origin, and no certificate can fix that afterwards.
Repacking, relabelling, splitting a consignment and simple assembly are on the minimal-operations list. They do not earn origin.
Your broker files the entry with the Revenue Service, and the origin document is what decides which duty column the goods land in. Without it, the same cargo is assessed at MFN. With a claim filed and nothing behind it, the entry gets observed, held, or liquidated at the higher rate — and the difference comes back to you with interest.
Georgia’s tariff has three rates, so the outcome is binary: on a 5% or 12% line, the agreement rate is zero and the whole duty falls away. Multiply the rate by the customs value and you have what the certificate is worth on that shipment. On a large container of machinery that is not a rounding error.
Roughly nine lines in ten already enter at zero under MFN. On those, filing for preference produces no duty change. The certificate is still worth having when the contract, the credit or your own compliance file calls for proof of Chinese origin — and worth skipping when none of them do.
A preference claim at entry rests on the certificate: the agreement cited, the certificate number, the origin criterion, the description and the six-digit code. Mismatch with the entry data sends the claim back, and a resubmitted entry is assessed on the day it is resubmitted, not the day the cargo arrived.
Georgian letters of credit routinely call for “Certificate of Origin Form GE in one original.” A certificate issued late, with the wrong consignee wording, or with a description that does not match the invoice, is a discrepancy — and discrepancies cost money at presentation, not at the border.
Preference claims can be verified after release. The Georgian authority sends the request to China, the issuing office pulls contracts, invoices, ledgers and production records, and the answer comes back through the single contact point China Customs keeps on file. During that window your entry can be released against a guarantee.
Georgia is a transit and re-export hub, but Chinese-origin goods that move through it do not become Georgian. To sell into a third market on Georgian origin, the goods have to be substantially transformed inside one of Georgia’s free industrial zones — Poti, Kutaisi or the Tbilisi zone — and take a Georgian certificate. That is a different transaction, not a Form GE.
Inside China, Form GE comes from one of two offices — China Customs at the port of export, or CCPIT and its local branches. Both are accepted in Georgia; which one you use is usually settled by the contract, the letter of credit or your supplier’s existing filing profile.
| Channel | What it is | Where you file | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| China Customs | Government issuing authority — the customs house at the port of export | Internet + Customs at online.customs.gov.cn (tax and fee services → origin management → certificate issuance), or the Single Window at singlewindow.cn → origin certificate → China–Georgia FTA | Your buyer or the credit wants a government-issued certificate, or you want the certificate tied to the declaration data |
| CCPIT | Chamber-of-commerce issuer — the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and its local branches | CCPIT origin certificate portal at co.ccpit.org or declare.ecoccpit.net | The buyer asks for a chamber certificate or a chamber stamp, or the supplier already files everything through CCPIT |
Form GE is a fully electronic filing. The supplier enters the goods and transport details, the issuing office reviews online, and the certificate is self-printed in colour on A4, double-sided, carrying the electronic seal and signature — identical in effect to a certificate printed by the office. Collecting at the counter is still possible. Trips to a government office are normally zero.
Where the goods load decides which office is natural: cargo out of Shenzhen or the Pearl River Delta usually goes through Shenzhen Customs or the Shenzhen CCPIT, which keeps follow-up simple; cargo moving through Guangzhou, Nansha, Huangpu, Ningbo, Shanghai, Qingdao, Tianjin or Xiamen is filed with the office that matches the port of export.
The traffic runs both ways. Georgian-origin goods entering China at the agreement rate need a certificate from Georgia’s designated issuing body, checked against the same rules. If the certificate is not in hand at declaration, the importer may declare the goods as originating before release, file the origin declaration and post a duty guarantee; the guarantee is released when the certificate arrives, within one year of import and inside the approved guarantee period. Claims made after release do not re-open the assessment. Single consignments with a customs value of USD 600 or less are exempt from the certificate — unless the shipment was split to stay under that line.
One more point that saves arguments: this agreement has no origin-declaration route. Georgia is not among the partners whose exporters may self-declare origin in place of a certificate, so preference rests on the certificate — or on the electronic data the two administrations already exchange.
The rule is narrow. The certificate is applied for by the exporter (the shipper on the export declaration) or the manufacturer, either directly or through an agent appointed with a signed power of attorney, and it is issued by an authorised office. In daily practice that gives you three arrangements.
The manufacturer keeps its own profile current and files its own certificates. Tightest control over the origin story, and it works best when the product range is narrow and there is a documents desk on site.
The exporter applies in its own name, so the name on the certificate matches the invoice and the bill of lading it issued. The sensible route for high-volume shippers with a dedicated documents team.
We file on your behalf and the certificate still carries the shipper’s or the maker’s name — never ours. The usual route for suppliers without a filing profile, a thin documents desk, or cargo spread across several ports.
Company registration for origin certificates was abolished on November 1, 2023 (GACC Announcement No. 136 of 2023), so there is no separate “origin registration” to complete before a first certificate. What remains: the company details on file in the system — unified social credit code, Chinese and English name and address — and, for self-printing, the company’s Chinese and English seal images plus the declarant’s signature, uploaded and authorised. When a forwarder files as agent, the agency relationship and the power of attorney are recorded in the same system.
The measures are specific: the application goes in before or at the time of shipment, and the certificate is valid for one year from the date of issue. That is not a formality. The form carries the means of transport and the route — departure date, vessel and voyage or flight number, port of loading and discharge — and none of it is fixed until the booking is confirmed.
Departure date, vessel or flight, and discharge port at Poti or Batumi, or the Tbilisi airport. Pull the invoice, the packing list and the origin support.
Is there a product-specific rule for the heading? Run it. Is it a value test? Build the calculation on the ex-works price and keep the bill of materials behind it.
Filed in the Customs or CCPIT system, description taken line by line from the invoice. Review takes two business days; a clean file often clears the same day.
PDF to the Georgian broker for pre-filing, original with the shipping documents or by courier. The certificate number has to match the entry.
Retroactive issuance is available: the applicant may apply within one year of the shipment date, submitting the bill of lading or air waybill as proof of that date. The certificate is marked ISSUED RETROSPECTIVELY and, unusually, its validity runs twelve months from the shipment date rather than from issue. Returned cargo, and cargo whose origin cannot be verified, gets no retroactive certificate at all.
The commercial catch is separate from the rule. A certificate dated after the bill of lading is exactly what a Georgian broker and an issuing bank look at first, and some credits refuse a retroactive certificate outright. If the goods can be filed before loading, file them before loading.
Amendments and copies have their own path. Within the certificate’s validity, the applicant may request a certified true copy where the original was lost or damaged: the office reissues it marked as a copy, notes the original as void, and the copy keeps the original’s validity. For wrong content, the office either issues a new certificate — the original must be surrendered, or annotated as void if it cannot be — or amends the original in place, signing and stamping at the change. A used original that has been copied is void, and so is a copy of an original that was already used.
Ocean freight lands at Poti, the country’s main general cargo port, or Batumi, which handles mostly oil products; both are reached through Black Sea hubs, commonly via Turkey. Rail moves along the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route — China to Kazakhstan, across the Caspian to Azerbaijan, then into Georgia, ending at Tbilisi or Poti. Air freight uses Tbilisi International Airport, and the Shanghai–Tbilisi route is now flown direct.
Which routing you book does not change the certificate’s validity, but it does decide whether the direct-shipment rule is satisfied. Cargo transiting a third country has to meet all of these: the transit is due only to geography or transport needs; nothing is done to the goods beyond unloading, reloading or what is needed to keep them in condition; the goods stay under the third country’s customs control; temporary storage stays under three months; and a certificate or evidence from that third country’s customs can be produced. Decide this at booking, not at the discharge port.
Self-filing and agent filing walk the same official path. What changes is who fills the form, who checks it, and who does the rework when a field is wrong. Form GE carries one step a plain CO does not: settling the origin criterion before anything is typed.
Destination is Georgia, and the line sits in the agreement’s schedule. There is no second bilateral route into Georgia for Chinese goods, so this check is quick.
Product-specific rule in Annex 1? Run it. Value test? Calculate on the ex-works price. No rule for the heading? The threshold is 40% regional value content. Keep the bill of materials behind the number.
Commercial invoice, packing list, and bill of lading or air waybill. Reconcile invoice number, date, value, package count, gross and net weight, and marks.
China exports at 10 digits; the certificate carries six; Georgia assesses on its own line. The first six have to agree, because that is what decides the duty column.
Enter company and goods details. The description follows the invoice line by line, and the origin criterion box states what you actually used — not what you hope will pass.
The authority responds within two business days, and corrections usually come back in one pass. Then self-print in colour on A4, or collect at the counter.
PDF first so the Georgian broker can pre-file, original with the shipping documents or by courier. Certificate copy and application file are kept three years from issue — that is the file a verification request pulls.
The list is short, and one item on it is heavier than the rest: the origin support. That is where Form GE differs from a plain CO, and where review questions usually start.
There are two separate bills and it helps to keep them apart: what the issuing office charges, which is nothing, and what the agent charges for the work.
Both China Customs and CCPIT publish no charge for issuing an origin certificate. The paper, the review and the electronic seal are not billed to the applicant. Anyone quoting you a “government fee” for Form GE is either misinformed or marking something up.
What we charge covers the work around the filing: reading the origin rule, assembling the support, reconciling three document sets, entering the data, tracking the review, printing, and reworking a rejected file. One certificate, one price.
There is exactly one preferential route into Georgia for Chinese-origin goods. Most of the confusion comes from the agreements Georgia has with the European Union and Turkey — neither of which China is a party to.
| Certificate | What it is | Covers | Works for a Georgia entry? |
|---|---|---|---|
| China–Georgia FTA — Form GE | Preferential (declaration code 20) | Georgia | Yes, at the agreement rate |
| Certificate of origin — CO | Non-preferential | Any destination | No preference; proof of origin only, MFN rate |
| China–ASEAN — Form E | Preferential | ASEAN member states | No; Georgia is not a party |
| China–Korea — Form K | Preferential | Korea | No; unrelated to a Georgian entry |
| China–Australia — ChAFTA | Preferential | Australia | No; unrelated to a Georgian entry |
| China–Chile — Form F | Preferential | Chile | No; wrong agreement |
| China–Peru — Form R | Preferential | Peru | No; wrong agreement |
| RCEP | Preferential | ASEAN ten plus China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand | No; Georgia is not an RCEP party |
| EU DCFTA, Georgia–Turkey FTA, CIS arrangements | Georgia’s preferential deals with third parties | Their own parties | No; China is not a party, so no Chinese office issues them |
A preferential certificate is a document between the parties to one agreement. Georgia’s DCFTA with the European Union, its free trade agreement with Turkey and its arrangements with CIS countries cover goods originating in their parties. China is not a party to any of them, so no Chinese authority issues those certificates, and the Georgian customs authority has nothing to grant preference against. Form GE is the route.
There is a real second path, but it is a manufacturing one. Georgia runs free industrial zones at Poti, Kutaisi and Tbilisi, where qualifying businesses get relief from most taxes. Goods substantially transformed inside a zone can obtain a Georgian certificate of origin and sell onward as Georgian. That is production inside Georgia, not a certificate for Chinese exports, and the two should never be sold as the same thing.
The reverse direction works the same way: Georgian goods entering China at the agreement rate need a Georgian certificate, and no other agreement applies. China took 7,781 lines to zero for Georgian goods, 7,529 at entry into force and 252 over five years, which is why Georgian wine and mineral products have become competitive in the Chinese market.
One last set of codes, because they get mixed up. The 20 in the “preferential agreement” column of the Chinese export declaration and the GE certificate type code are two different registries, one for the customs declaration and one for the certificate system. Do not substitute one for the other. This page gives the China–Georgia values only; for any other agreement, use the code tables currently published by China Customs and the prompts in the filing system, not an older list found elsewhere.
No US free trade agreement. For the American market there is no preferential certificate to file; a plain CO remains the origin document of choice, and it is still called for in antidumping and countervailing cases and in letter-of-credit presentations. Follow your customer’s and the destination authority’s requirements.
Issuing the certificate is the start, not the end. What the Georgian side questions is rarely whether a certificate exists — it is whether the certificate says the right thing and rests on numbers that hold up.
Imported parts certified as wholly obtained, or 40% claimed without a build-up behind it. This is the most common and most serious Form GE failure, and it can be tested years later.
This agreement measures regional value content on the ex-works price, not FOB. Run it on FOB and the percentage flatters the goods; leave freight and insurance out of the non-originating material value and the same happens.
“Machinery,” “parts,” “goods” — none of it describes anything. The certificate has to list what the invoice lists: name, specification, model, quantity, and a description an inspector can match to the cargo.
The certificate carries six digits; Georgia assesses on its own line. If the first six do not match what the broker declared, the preference falls away — and re-filing costs more than filing correctly the first time.
Invoice number, date, value, package count, weights, marks — one disagreement between invoice, packing list, bill of lading and declaration is enough to start a query.
A certificate dated after shipment without a retroactive marking, or one with handwritten corrections and no office stamp, reads as a document with a problem. Corrections belong to the issuing office.
The Georgian customs authority can ask China to verify a preference claim, and the request runs through the issuing office. The result comes back through the single contact point China Customs keeps on file. The import-side clock is what hurts: if no answer arrives within six months of the request, or the answer does not establish the certificate’s authenticity and the goods’ origin, the consignment does not get the agreement rate. While that runs, the cargo can be released against a duty guarantee — which is cash your buyer has tied up.
If the claim fails, the duty that was not paid comes back with interest, and storage and detention at the port usually cost more than the duty ever did. For a shipper, the only useful defence is upstream: settle the origin criterion with the numbers, and make the three document sets agree before the certificate is filed. That is why our files are built backwards from the bill of materials rather than forwards from the invoice.
The twelve questions that come up most often from Georgian buyers and their brokers, answered with the rule rather than the sales pitch.
Form GE is the preferential certificate under the China–Georgia Free Trade Agreement, printed as Certificate of Origin Form for China–Georgia Free Trade Agreement, carried as agreement code 20 on the declaration and typed as GE in the certificate system. A plain CO is non-preferential: it proves the goods are Chinese, supports the MFN rate and trade statistics, and grants nothing under the agreement. Both come from the same offices, but the filing content, the origin test and the duty outcome differ.
No. It depends on your contract, the letter of credit, what your broker needs for the entry, and whether the line sits in the agreement’s schedule. Georgia’s duty has only three rates — 0%, 5% and 12% — and roughly nine lines in ten already enter at zero; on those the certificate produces no duty saving, though it may still be required as a document. On a 5% or 12% line it does produce a saving, and to declare the agreement rate it is the only document that works.
Not automatically. Georgia removed duty on 9,955 lines — 96.5% of its schedule — but the lines outside that list keep their MFN rate, and the rate for any specific line has to be read from Georgia’s schedule for that code. The goods must also clear the origin rule. And the certificate does not reduce Georgia’s 18% VAT or any excise.
The issuing office completes its review within two business days of accepting the filing. With a clean file and a settled origin criterion, most certificates are issued the same day or the next; a same-day request depends on that day’s queue.
The issuing office charges no visa fee, and both China Customs and CCPIT publish a zero charge. What you pay is the agent’s service fee, quoted per certificate, with the analysis, the filing, amendments, extra originals and courier listed separately so the number does not move afterwards.
The exporter (the shipper on the export declaration) or the manufacturer, directly or through an agent holding a signed power of attorney. When a forwarder files as agent, the certificate still carries the shipper’s or the maker’s name. Agents do not sell certificates.
Registration for origin certificates was abolished on November 1, 2023 (GACC Announcement No. 136 of 2023). A first filing still needs the company details on file — unified social credit code, Chinese and English name and address — and self-printing needs the company seal images and the declarant’s signature uploaded and authorised.
One of three routes: wholly obtained or produced in China; produced entirely from originating materials; or produced using non-originating materials that pass the product-specific rule for the heading in Annex 1, with a fallback regional value content threshold of 40% where no rule applies. The value is calculated as (ex-works price − value of non-originating materials) ÷ ex-works price × 100 — ex-works, not FOB. De minimis allows non-originating materials up to 10% of the ex-works price where a classification change is missed. Simple assembly, repacking and labelling do not confer origin.
Yes. The applicant may apply within one year of the shipment date, submitting the bill of lading or air waybill. The certificate is marked ISSUED RETROSPECTIVELY and is valid for twelve months from the shipment date. Returned cargo, or cargo whose origin cannot be verified, is refused. Some letters of credit will not accept a retroactive certificate, so filing before loading is still the better plan.
One year from the date of issue. A retroactive certificate runs twelve months from the shipment date. Within that window the certificate can be amended or a certified true copy issued; past it, a new application is the only option.
No, provided the direct-shipment rule is met: the transit is due only to geography or transport needs, nothing is done to the goods beyond unloading, reloading or preserving them, they remain under the third country’s customs control, temporary storage stays under three months, and evidence from that customs authority can be produced. Book the routing with this in mind rather than discovering it at discharge.
No. A preferential certificate only works between the parties to that agreement. Georgia’s DCFTA with the EU, its FTA with Turkey and its CIS arrangements cover goods originating in their own parties, and China is not one of them — no Chinese office issues those certificates and Georgian customs cannot grant preference on them. Form GE is the only route for Chinese-origin goods, and Georgia is not an RCEP party either.
We are a freight forwarder and documentation desk in Shenzhen, working out of Futian. Export declarations, origin certificates, fumigation, commodity inspection and legalization for one order are delivered through one window wherever the rules allow it.
The product-specific rule is checked, or the value calculation is built on the ex-works price, before the filing screen is opened. A wrong origin criterion is an amendment at best and a verification at worst.
Form GE has to be issued before or at shipment, so our filing slot sits after the booking is confirmed and before the vessel loads — not after the on-board date, when the only option left is a retroactive certificate.
Cargo out of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nansha, Huangpu, Ningbo, Shanghai, Qingdao, Tianjin or Xiamen is filed with the office that matches the port of export, so the certificate and the routing agree.
The PDF goes out the moment it clears so the Georgian broker can pre-file. The original travels with the bill of lading or by courier, and the file is archived for the three-year retention period.
Tell us what the goods are made of and when the vessel loads. You get an origin assessment, the issue date we can hold, the document checklist, and an itemized quote for the filing — from Shenzhen, for cargo out of any China port.
