The Asian Development Bank, under the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation program, is helping Maldives implement a robust domestic and regional trade system. This integrated trade network facilitates seamless movement of goods and documents, across organizational and national boundaries, and will vastly improve the business environment and overall economic activity. This publication outlines key blockchain use cases recommended for implementation in Maldives for trade facilitation. A feasibility study conducted from April to July 2019 established the use cases of blockchain technology to facilitate cross-border trade and improve operational performance of domestic trade processes in Maldives.
With efforts for further substantive liberalization of trade showing little signs of success, focus has shifted to the rationalization and simplification of procedural regulations in international trade. The Agreement on the Trade Facilitation in Goods came into force in 2017, and proposals for similar agreements for trade in services and foreign investment have been submitted and are under discussion. This book discusses both existing and proposed provisions on trade facilitation within the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It covers relevant General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) provisions and jurisprudence, the negotiating history of the Trade Facilitation Agreement in Goods, provisions of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement and their relevance for developing countries’ concerns, with special emphasis on India, and the prospects for a global digital trade facilitation platform. The book also discusses the desirability for trade facilitation agreements for services and investment and the possibility of success of the proposals submitted in this regard in the WTO.
This edition focuses on trade connectivity, which is critical for inclusiveness and sustainable development. Physical connectivity enables the movement of goods and services to local, regional and global markets.
Trade has always been shaped by technological innovation. In recent times, a new technology, Blockchain, has been greeted by many as the next big game-changer. Can Blockchain revolutionize international trade? This publication seeks to demystify the Blockchain phenomenon by providing a basic explanation of the technology. It analyses the relevance of this technology for international trade by reviewing how it is currently used or can be used in the various areas covered by WTO rules. In doing so, it provides an insight into the extent to which this technology could affect cross-border trade in goods and services, and intellectual property rights. It discusses the potential of Blockchain for reducing trade costs and enhancing supply chain transparency as well as the opportunities it provides for small-scale producers and companies. Finally, it reviews various challenges that must be addressed before the technology can be used on a wide scale and have a significant impact on international trade.
This book presents an analysis of the state of trade facilitation in member countries of the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) program. It includes country-level studies and identifies four common trade facilitation priorities among SASEC countries: (i) implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement and other international conventions; (ii) logistics and infrastructure development, and related regulatory reforms; (iii) coordinated border management; and (iv) institutions and capacity building.
Real borders can be thick. They are not dimensionless lines as typically assumed in theoretical models and standard empirical analyses, but a zone populated by agencies that develop and administer regulations firms have to comply with when engaging in international trade, many of which have their own procedures. Borders can then easily become a labyrinth hard to get through. This is crucial because border agencies' procedures influence the time needed to ship goods from their origins to their destinations and can thereby affect trade, particularly in a context characterized by increasingly segmented production chains and rising lean retailing. Latin American and Caribbean countries have recently implemented various trade facilitation initiatives that aim to streamline the administrative processing of trade flows and accordingly reduce trading times. These initiatives include risk management, single windows, authorized economic operators, simplified postal exports, and expedited transit arrangements, all of which are cornerstones of the 2013 WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation and have been subject of multiple international organizations' operations. Despite of being ubiquitous, evidence on the impact of these specific initiatives has been extremely limited. Lack of precise data has been a major obstacle. Out of the Border Labyrinth fills this gap and sheds entirely new light on the trade effects of such trade facilitation measures and the channels thereof. It presents the results of thorough impact evaluations, which have been carried out by applying rigorous methods on unprecedented transaction-level data for several countries in the region. These results reveal that trade actually expanded as a consequence of such facilitation measures and that the primary channel has been shipping frequency. Based on these econometric examinations and careful institutional case studies, Out of the Border Labyrinth systematizes a new line of trade policy research and informs policymaking and assistance activities by international organizations by providing tools that will help design and assess policies in an area that will be very active in upcoming years as countries work towards implementing the multilateral agreement reached in Bali.
Since 2010, the ECE has been undertaking demand-driven national studies of regulatory and procedural barriers to trade, with a view to: helping countries achieve greater regional and global economic integration; informing donors as to where assistance might be required; and supporting policy discussions within the Steering Committee on Trade Capacity and Standards (previously, the Committee on Trade) and its subsidiary bodies on where additional work is required. This study summarizes the key findings of the seventh study, which focuses on Georgia. It was prepared by the ECE secretariat in close consultation with public and private sector stakeholders. The study integrates the outcome of the stakeholder meeting, which was organized in Tbilisi, Georgia on 23 April 2018 by the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development to discuss the initial results and recommendations.
Trade facilitation measures seek to speed up the movement of goods and the flow of trade information across borders. This publication contains policy papers written by the UNECE Secretariat and edited papers presented at an international forum, held in Geneva in May 2002. This conference was organised by the UNECE in order to discuss the need for trade facilitation policies to address the widening gap between the position of developed economies compared to many developing and transition countries in a global trade environment.
Trade costs and inclusive growth looks at how implementation of the WTO's Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) can help to reduce trade costs and promote growth. The publication rings together contributions from ten participants in the WTO Chairs Programme, which supports trade-related activities by academic institutions in developing countries. The book looks into how the Aid for Trade initiative can assist with implementing the TFA, the importance of mainstreaming trade into national development strategies, and the potential impact of the TFA in various regions.
"This document identifies the principal tensions and opportunities arising that are impacting the inevitable and ongoing digitalization process that is underway in the maritime sector, particularly through the authors' experience in the development and subsequent validation of the Port Collaborative Decision Making (PortCDM) concept. The document also identifies the trends of development at large and those associated with the many stakeholders that are involved in global maritime operations..."--Page 6.
