APEC economies and business are advancing a joint
initiative to make electronic trade documents work across
borders, tackling legal, technical and capacity barriers
that continue to keep much of global trade reliant on
paper.
Around four
billion paper
documents still circulate through global trade each
year, with less than one percent fully digitalized. Even
where trade documents have gone electronic, different legal
frameworks, technical standards and digital systems can
prevent them from being recognized or exchanged across
borders.
This challenge was discussed at a dialogue
held in Dalian last week by the APEC Centre of Excellence
for Paperless Trade (ACCEPT). Endorsed
last year, ACCEPT, is a collaborative initiative between
APEC economies and the APEC
Business Advisory Council (ABAC) to help close these
gaps and accelerate the practical adoption of paperless
trade.
“We want to reduce the cost and friction of
moving goods across borders, yet for many businesses, trade
unfortunately remains far more paper based,” said Kok Ping
Soon, ABAC Singapore member and Chief Executive Officer of
the Singapore Business Federation (SBF).
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“Legal
frameworks differ across jurisdictions and systems do not
always connect seamlessly with one another,” Kok added.
“As a result, the result is familiar to many of us:
delays, duplicated processes, higher compliance costs and
uncertainty.”
SBF, through its Centre for the Future
of Trade and Investment, hosts the ACCEPT Secretariat and
provides administrative, logistical and program support for
its work. Its initial work focuses on four documents at the
heart of many trade transactions, such as electronic bills
of lading, certificates of origin, invoices and customs
bonds.
The scale of the opportunity is significant.
Ocean carriers issue around 45 million bills of lading each
year, with about 95 percent still not electronic, while
hundreds of billions of business-to-business invoices
continue to be processed in non-electronic form globally.
Research presented at the dialogue shows that the bigger
challenge increasingly emerges when documents have to move
between economies.
“Paperless trade will only
deliver its full benefits when electronic documents can move
across borders as reliably as the goods they support,”
said Julio Chan, Chair of the APEC
Committee on Trade and Investment.
“ACCEPT gives
APEC economies and businesses a practical way to address the
gaps that still stand in the way, from legal recognition and
common standards to interoperability, and ultimately make
cross-border trade easier, faster and more
efficient.”
A key part of ACCEPT’s work is to move
from policy into practice through pilot programs that test
electronic trade documents in real-world transactions and
identify where legal, technical and operational barriers
remain. Progress on paperless trade will require the
involvement of a vast number of stakeholders across the
supply chain and ACCEPT brings governments and businesses
together in this regard.
The dialogue brought together
over 40 participants from 14 APEC economies, businesses and
international organizations to discuss the practical next
steps needed to advance cross-border paperless
trade.
In her closing remarks at the dialogue, Denise
Pereira, Director of the International Trade Division at
Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, said pilot
programs can help test what works in actual cross-border
transactions and identify where processes break
down.
“The vision should be for successful pilots to
provide a pathway towards regular commercial use,” Pereira
said. “Businesses and governments will need to build on
initial adoption to embed electronic trade documents into
day-to-day trade processes and allow the scaling of
solutions for mass adoption by businesses.”
For
businesses, particularly smaller firms with fewer resources
to navigate different systems and requirements, making
electronic trade documents work across borders could mean
less paperwork, lower compliance costs and fewer delays
moving goods.
ACCEPT welcomes participation from both
public and private stakeholders for a meaningful collective
endeavour and valuable objectives. ACCEPT’s progress will
be reported annually to APEC economies and
ABAC.
