ICC Bangladesh President Mahbubur Rahman (extreme left) delivering his concluding remarks as Chair of the Session I : E-Trade for SME Integration in Regional and Global Value Chains during the UNESCAP ADB Asia-Pacific Trade Facilitation Forum 2012 in Colombo recently. Speakers (from left to right) are: Somnuk Keretho, Director, INOVA, Kasetstart University, Thailand, Wang Jian, Expert of APEC E-Commerce Business Alliance, China International Electronic Commerce Centre and Rajasekhar, Senior Vice President, ITC.

Asia Pacific Trade Facilitation Forum 2012, jointly organized by United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Colombo ended recently with the call for the countries of the region to reduce non-tariff trade barriers.

Strengthening regional connectivity for trade facilitation within the region was also highlighted.

Dr. Sarath Amunugama, Senior Minister, International Monetary Cooperation of Sri Lanka in his inaugural address suggested the need for developing and expanding the regional connectivity for increased trade within the Asia Pacific Region in view of the continuous economic slow down in Europe and the USA.

The opening ceremony was also addressed by Abdul Rishad Bathiudeen Minister, Industry and Commerce of Sri Lanka, Dr. Ravi Ratnayake, Director, Trade and Investment Division, ESCAP and Ms. Rita A. O Sullivan, Country Director, ADB Sri Lanka.

The Minister also launched the publication on “Capacity Building Kit for Single Window Implementation” jointly published by UNNExT (United Nations Network of Exporters for Paperless Trade in Asia and Pacific), UNESCAP and UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe).

ICC Bangladesh President, who attended the Forum at the invitation of UNESCAP and ADB, chaired a session on E-Trade for SME Integration in Regional or Global Value Chains In his remarks he appreciated the efforts of UNESCAP and ADB for promotion of paperless trade for the potential SMEs using IT and other electronic devices. Many of these however seldom keep records, transact business informally, and are not mainstream users of IT. To promote paperless trade for these (micro enterprises) would not be easy nor even sensible – what may be needed is to improve their environments so they can graduate to being SMEs with formal records, systems, and IT facilities, he observed.

Mr Mahbubur Rahman, however, pointed out that when US Defense webpage could be hacked and penetrated one has to be extra cautious and ensure security in paperless trading as it involved trillions of dollars of business transactions.

As a panelist at the High-Level Panel Discussion on “Enhancing Public-Private Collaboration for Trade Facilitation and Paperless Trade”, the ICCB president mentioned about the various steps taken by the government of Bangladesh for simplifying the trade as well as reducing various steps to cut down the time required for export and import clearance. He said that Bangladesh is also considering the ways and means for reducing various trade barriers to improve its present ranking of 122nd out 183 economies in the World Bank indicators on “Doing Business”.

Earlier on October 29 UNESCAP and ADB jointly arranged a SASEC (South Asia Sub-region Economic Cooperation) Stakeholders Workshop on Sub-regional Trade and Transit Collaboration. Business Process Analysis, which is a practical study, commissioned by UNESCAP and ADB to indentify various steps involved in trade between Bhutan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal and ways of reducing the impediments for cutting down both time and costs was presented.

The participants suggested various steps including simplification and harmonization of trade procedures, more particularly at border, development modern corridor management techniques in selected corridors, facilitate regional transit (overland), development of regional institution (public-private interface) for trade facilitation, digitization of trade documentation and reducing the existing huge trade gap between India and rest SASEC countries under Trade Facilitation reforms and initiatives, skill development of customs officials as well as developing a Single National Window in each country for removing various barriers both at borders and at origin.

ICC Bangladesh Secretary General Ataur Rahman, Dr. Md. Shahidul Islam Director General (CC), Duty Exemption and Drawback Office, NBR and Mr. Mohammad Yunus, Senior Research Fellow, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies attended the workshop and the Forum.

The Forum was attended by more than 200 government officials, traders, public and private service providers, Chamber Leaders from Central Asia, South and South-East and East Asia as well as the South Pacific.

The objective of the Forum was to share experiences and knowledge on trade facilitation between countries of the greater Asia and Pacific region including LDCs and LLDCs, fostering increased understanding and exchange of views between public and private stakeholders along with trade facilitation standards developers and technical assistance providers, learning about and drawing lessons from on-going implementation of national and regional trade facilitation measures and introducing relevant international tools, instruments and facilities aimed at increasing the efficiency of regional and global cross-border trade using the latest tools invented by UNNExT.

ADB, UNESCAP and the World Bank also arranged a number of events related to trade facilitation on the sideline of the two-day Forum. The events included SASEC ( South Asia Sub-region Economic Cooperation) Stakeholders Workshop on Sub-regional Trade and Transit Collaboration, Annual Meeting of Regional Organizations Cooperation Mechanism for Trade, World Bank Global Facilitation Partnership for Transportation and Trade (GFP) Meeting :”Transit Facilitation for Regional Connectivity: Enhancing Corridor Performance” , Workshop on WCO Economic Competitiveness and Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT).