Streamlining formalities and documentary procedures allows governments, governmental agencies and business communities to take advantage of elimination of redundant data and duplication of information. This process entails a regular review of domestic and cross border trade documents. The review ensures that (i) the regulatory and official requirements and the business needs of the trading community are fully considered in an open, transparent and inclusive way; (ii) all the data requested is justified by a regulation or a specific business need – the legislative framework should also be reviewed regularly to correspond to actual business practices; (iii) the information requested is still pertinent and up-to- date; and (iv) the data requested cannot be inferred from any other sources.
The review of all the documents used in domestic and international trade should be conducted on a regular basis. For ease of conducting this review, the documents should be divided into specific functional groups, for instance, Commercial, Transport, Financial (including international payments) and Official.