Press release

19 Nov 2013

Bangkok-Beirut

Global Trade Facilitation Conference 18-19 November 2013
UN Regional Commissions join forces for global trade facilitation and paperless trade

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The Global Trade Facilitation Conference 2013, organized by the five UN Regional Commissions just concluded in Bangkok, Thailand, calling on all countries to continue their efforts to cut red tape and simplify trade procedures in order to achieve more sustainable and inclusive development. The conference was organized during the Third Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Week held by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and is part of the ‘Joint UN Regional Commissions Approach to Trade Facilitation’. Building on the first Conference held in December 2011 in Geneva, the theme of this year’s Global event was ‘Beyond Single Window: Paperless Supply Chains for Trade Facilitation and Inclusive Development’. The conference brought together policy makers, private sector service providers and experts from about 40 countries from around the World. The Conference highlighted the significant performance gaps among countries and regions in terms of trade costs and supply chain connectivity. According to the ESCAP-World Bank trade cost database, while some developing countries have become more integrated into global trade, many have seen their relative position in terms of trade cost deteriorating because the rest of the world is moving more quickly in streamlining trade procedures. A new International Supply Chain Connectivity Index (ISCCI) , released during the Global Conference along with the Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Report 2013, suggested that learning from the experience of Asian countries may be particularly useful as the World’s five most connected economies were now all located in East or South-East Asia. The conference acknowledged the significant progress made in many developing countries, including least developed countries, in automating customs procedures and developing national single window and related paperless systems for trade facilitation. In light of the investments being made in national systems and the increasingly stringent supply chain security requirements in major markets, the Conference called on countries and regions to work together to ensure inter-connectivity of paperless trade systems within and across countries. This would ultimately enable the development of paperless supply chains, where all the parties involved in an international trade transactions exchange information and documents in electronic rather in paper form, leading to tremendous increase in transparency and efficiency. The regional arrangement for cross-border paperless trade facilitation under discussion among ESCAP Member States could provide a good framework for other World’s region, along with related UN/CEFACT recommendations being developed at UNECE and the UNESCWA/LAS initiatives to reduce trade costs among Arab countries to increase gains from GAFTA (Great Arab Free Trade Area) and reinforce Arab economic integration. The conference concluded that moving towards cross-border paperless supply chains was both visionary and timely but stressed that this was a long-term effort that required close collaboration among countries as well as among the public and private sector. Within the public sector, transferring knowledge from Customs to other government agencies (OGAs) involved in trade control would be important as OGAs often lagged behind in terms of use of modern information and communication technologies. Institutionalizing public-private sector collaboration and developing conducive national and international legal frameworks would also be essential. In that context, the conference emphasized the need for development partners to provide sufficient capacity building and technical assistance to developing countries for trade facilitation and paperless trade, in particular least developed and landlocked countries.
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