Press Release

[Index]      

Geneva, 12 July 2005 - The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) set a major course for paperless trade at its annual session. The ‘Roadmap towards Paperless Trade’ was launched at the international Forum on trade facilitation: “Paperless Trade in International Supply Chains: Enhancing Efficiency and Security”.

This third international forum on trade facilitation took place on 20 and 21 June, with over 300 participants representing 61 countries and 88 international organizations and NGOs. It focused on the numerous benefits and challenges of switching to paperless trade, especially for customs clearance, trade logistics, banking, port management and air transport.

Addressing the Forum, P. Robineau, Acting Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commissions for Europe – where UN/CEFACT is based – said that the “Roadmap” ¹ was the result of a worldwide dialogue engaged in by UN/CEFACT since July 2004. “Paperless trading”, he said, “will support economic development through secure, simpler border crossing and reduced corruption in the movement of goods. On this roadmap the reader can see what activities and tools will make the journey a success”.

A. Popovich, Global Head of Cargo at IATA (International Air Transport Association), told participants that paperless trade – such as electronic invoicing – could save companies billions of dollars in international transaction costs. D. Leeper, Senior Vice President, Global Product and Carrier Management, GeoLogistics, United Kingdom, said that paperless trade would also bring increased security and less adverse environmental impact, on condition that it is done properly.

New Building Blocks towards paperless trade

The Centre has now adopted the new, global United Nations electronic Trade Documents (UNeDocs)² standard for digital trade documents. The standard will develop both paper and electronic documents for cross-border trade.

The group approved their first five Business Requirement Specification standards³, which cover a wide spectrum of business knowledge for the automated invoicing process; payment between customer and supplier; the global procurement process for the air industry; electronic tendering; and automated certification of import of agricultural products. C. Fruehwald, UN/CEFACT Chairman and Vice-President of Siemens Supply Chain Management, explained that these standards can be used with any Information and Communication Technologies to simplify the international supply chains.

Cooperation and outreach

The Centre also approved the four principles of its intellectual property rights policy: “waiver”, “disclosure”, “exception handling” and “warranty”. M. Palmer, Vice Chair of UN/CEFACT, United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) lauded this as “a breakthrough for cooperation with private companies in developing ‘plug-and-play’ business software solutions using trade facilitation and e-business standards”.

UN/CEFACT and OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) reaffirmed their intent to continue to cooperate in defining and delivering electronic business standards and methods. P. Gannon, President and Chief Executive Officer of OASIS, referred to the positive outcomes of past cooperation, specifically the creation of the ebXML standards⁴ (which had recently been ratified as ISO 15000 Technical Specifications). He said that OASIS and UN/CEFACT would develop a coordination plan to address areas of common interest, such as harmonizing the core data components, and UBL.

The Centre approved a new framework of cooperation, which encourages the participation of private-sector companies interested in supporting UN/CEFACT standards through software tools. This form of cooperation supports the conclusions of the World Summit on the Information Society thematic meeting last January on “Economic and Social Implications of ICT”.

Elections

The Centre thanked the outgoing Chairman, Dr. Fruehwald for his leadership [as its Chairman] since 2000. It elected as its new Chairman Dr. Stuart Feder (United States), Advisor at the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, for a period of two years.

The next UN/CEFACT Forum meetings are scheduled for September 2005 in Lyon, France; March 2006 in Vancouver, Canada; and September 2006 in New Delhi, India. The 2006 annual session takes place in Geneva from 29 May to 2 June.

For further information, please contact:

Mr. Jean Kubler
Acting Chief, Global Trade Solutions Branch
UNECE Trade Development and Timber Division
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Phone: +41 (0) 22 917 2774
Fax: +41 (0) 22 917 0037
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://www.uncefact.org

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¹ http://www.unece.org/forums/forum05/presentations/Roadmap_Final.doc
² http://www.unedocs.org
³ http://www.unece.org/cefact/brs/brs_index.htm
⁴ http://www.ebxml.org

Ref: ECE/TRADE/05/P05