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Why something so rewarding as paperless trade should still be confined to the domain of potentiality analysis and expression of commitments poses a baffling question. More so, when it promises not only to tie up with the digital age but also to make positive use of a technology that has been vulnerable to abuse crying out for benign forms of utilisation. And what could be a better positive option than to harness it for trade deemed more beneficial than a somewhat obsolete foreign aid, even overtaking the rather receding quest for foreign direct investment (FDIs)! So much for the rationale for trade prioritisation.
Since multiple benefits of trade without voluminous, cluttered and signature-filled paperwork are within our grasp, why must we pepper over paperless trade? We need to go for a quicker and fuller implementation of this form of trade having regard to its benefits of saving costs, time and hassle, let alone ensuring transparent transactions and simultaneous documentations between trading partners.
According to a recent UN report, implementation of the WTO's digital trade facilitation agreement will reduce trade costs for Bangladesh by more than 30 per cent. Bangladesh has done the basic ratification exercises to be entitled to go for paperless trade with the co-signatories to the accords.
In October, 2016 Dhaka ratified the Trade Facilitation Agreement which had been adopted by the WTO in Bali, Indonesia in 2013. So,we took three years to sign up to it after its adoption.
Later in 2017, we saw Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Armenia and Islamic Republic of Iran formally signing the UN's Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-border Paperless Trade in Asia and Pacific region. India-Bangladesh border trade, which is substantial, is evidently operated under a different framework of direct inter-penetration with border haats stringing out as outlets waiting to be livelier. Cross-border trade in bulks between India and Bangladesh can be a test case for paperless trade.
Actually, Bangladesh's switch-over from the old trading system on to the digitalised platform clearly is yet some distance away. In fact, we have to get some fundamentals right by way of discarding bureaucratic habituation, streamlining procedures and drastically reducing the number of steps to decision-making. Decentralisation of power is key to speedy, efficient and fair disposal of trade matters or disputes.
What's, however, central to the implementation of paperless trade is fleshing out the infrastructural voids. Paperless trade cannot be simply rushed because it requires tech-savvy operators. It can also raise a spectre of automation-induced job loss including resistance from the habitually corrupt who prefer tangled procedures to streamlined ones to hang on to their favourite nuggets, as it were. So adequately sensitised and properly trained cadres will have to be raised for modernisation purposes; otherwise we may lag behind in trade facilitation as other competing nations forge ahead.
Siddiqur Rahman, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), laments, "We are not getting paperless facilities yet." His views should be heeded because garments export comprise 80 per cent of Bangladesh's outbound shipment.
It is worthwhile to note 'regional trade agreement (RTA) and free trade agreement (FTA) go further than the World Trade Organisation's (WTO's) Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) in promoting trade facilitation and application of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) to trade procedure.'
So there exist policy and operational parameters to take paperless trade forward.
In the context of Bangladesh, we need to have some reality checks not so much about digitalisation as such but to be prepared to attain end-result from the ease of trading free of bureaucratic tangles.
A magical solution can come from a vast improvement in our port handling capacities. We have a serious handicap in the shape of managing container trade. For lack of depth in our seaports, big ships dock not on jetties but in the outer-anchorage. Then smaller vessels off-load the containers to transport them to the inland ports. The handling of containers or bulk cargo takes inordinately long time which places us at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the neighbouring ports. To obviate this we struck up an arrangement with Korea to have direct container trade with. A wider replication risks glossing over the urgency of modernising Chittagong port at par with the ports in the neighbouring countries.
The above is highlighted to reinforce the imperative need for an expeditious improvement in our port handling capacities leading the way to installing not one but two deep-sea ports.