At the forefront of APEC is the goal of enhancing economic growth and prosperity in the region and strengthening the Asia-Pacific community. Cross-border trade is an essential driver for economic prosperity. It comprises regulatory procedures and private business’ processes. The co-operation among regulatory authorities and private business in this region is the key to sustain its growth.
As for paperless trading implementation, most of APEC member economies have prepared their individual action plans. Given that plans have been individually developed but co-operation among them is needed in cross-border situation, a commonly accepted trading practice should be worked out and be followed to make the cross-border process more seamless and consistent. The best practice can be placed in the reference base whose provision was endorsed by APEC Ministers in the 1998 Leaders Declaration.
E-trade (including trade of goods and service) is an important tool which has been widely used on cross-border trade in APEC region. However, different economies have different economic status and policy structures, face huge technical, policy and standardization blockades, which hinder development of E-Commerce and E-Trade of the APEC economies as well as business activities between the APEC economies. This project is aiming to explore barriers and obstacles among all APEC economies, analyze the problems from the aspects of both standards and policy, estimate the development levels of every economy and propose constructive suggestions. In general, one report and one 3 days symposium are involved in this project.
This project will analyze obstacles in E-Trade, study various standards of doing E-commerce and evaluate development of E-Trade, so as to allow the APEC officials and other people from APEC economies to know about the current situation of E-Trade, and give them a research report and proposals about removing cross-border blockades and formulating common standards. After the above-mentioned survey is conducted, this project aims to identify the best practice in paperless trading among APEC member economies, its critical success factors (CSF) and key performance indexes (KPI) for cross-border paperless trading, from perspectives of government regulatory and private business processes.
The best practice will be developed as model to reduce or eliminate the requirement for paper documents needed for customs and cross-border trade administration, as well as other documents and messages relevant to international sea, air and land transport. CSF and KPI of this practice will take account of business opportunities expansion, costs reduction, increase of efficiency, quality life improvement, and the greater participation of small business in global commerce, as APEC declared in the Blueprint for Action on Electronic Commerce.
The Project on Assessment and Best Practices on Paperless Trading To Facilitate Cross Border Trade In APEC Region is an ECSG-approved project co-sponsored by China and Chinese Taipei. Its objectives are:
Facilitate information-sharing among APEC economies, on domestic cargo clearance frameworks and cross-border trading processes, latest e-trade development status of developed and developing economies.
Analyze obstacles, compare standards and evaluate developments of E-Trade; integrate the standards and barriers resources of various economies.
Produce a best practice recommendation that will be referred or applied.
Enhance compatibilities of cross-border trading among APEC economies by the agreed recommendation.
