News
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), together with all four other United Nations regional commissions for Africa (ECA), Europe (ECE), Latin America and Caribbean (ECLAC) and West Asia (ESCWA), have launched the second global report on trade facilitation and paperless trade implementation.
The results, based on data from 120 countries worldwide, show that the global average implementation rate of the ambitious set of trade facilitation and paperless trade measures considered in the survey is about 60 percent. A comparison between the first and second global surveys shows that the overall implementation rate increased by approximately 9 percentage points between 2015 and 2017, indicating that countries have been making rapid progress. Results for the 44 Asia-Pacific countries included in the survey indicate an overall implementation rate of 50 percent in 2017, a 5 percentage points increase from 2015.
While top performers such as the Netherlands, Singapore, the South Korea and China have maintained their momentum, all with implementation rates exceeding 80 percent, the report shows that being a small or less developed economy is not necessarily associated with poor trade facilitation performance. But this is may not always be the case. What stands out however is that more than 40 economies with GDP per capita of less than $10,000 achieve implementation rates higher than 50 percent.
The report calls for a substantial acceleration of paperless and cross-paper trade. In Asia and the Pacific, the Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-Border Paperless Trade in Asia and the Pacific, adopted last year at ESCAP, will provide the institutional foundation for member states to cooperate and accelerate progress in this area, ultimately bolstering competitiveness of participating countries and enabling them to benefit fully from the digital economy.
