Making trade facilitation a reality: Officials of 70 countries meet in Geneva

GENEVA - With a major global agreement to make international trade "faster, easier and cheaper" due to take effect in the early weeks of 2017, more than 300 officials from some 70 countries who are charged with making it work began a weekly-long meeting yesterday at an UNCTAD-organised forum in Geneva.

The Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), brokered by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2013, requires almost the entire world to "streamline, standardise and simplify" passage of goods across borders, adding US$1 trillion to global trade output and hopefully helping end the sixth straight year of sluggish trade growth.

A central element of the TFA is the obligatory establishment in each country of a national trade facilitation committee (NTFC) with both public and private sector stakeholders “to facilitate both domestic coordination and implementation of the provisions of this agreement”.
“Supporting NTFCs and partnerships in trade is important during the present trade slow down and the increasing anti-globalisation trend globally," UNCTAD Secretary-General, Mukhisa Kituyi, said.
" Trade facilitation can play an important role to turn-around the international trade slump and boost their development agenda.”
WTO Director-General, Roberto Azevêdo, described the TFA as the biggest global trade deal in two decades – “and as such it is essential that it is delivered in full”.
"The Agreement aims to streamline, simplify and standardize customs procedures, thereby reducing the time and cost of moving goods across borders. It will help to cut trade costs around the world.”  www.unctad.org (ATI).