Page 9 - DMGT546_INTERNATIONAL_TRADE_PROCEDURE_AND_DOCUMENTATION

International Trade Procedures and Documentation

Notes He said a committee, set up under chairmanship of DGFT, had submitted its report. “We
shall be implementing them,” he said.
Electronic Data Interface (EDI) linkage will be ensured among all trade partners, like
DGFT, customs, banks, export promotion councils, to facilitate online filing, verification
and retrieval of documents.
A fast-track mechanism is being introduced for clearance, packaging, quarantine, etc. to
facilitate import and export of perishable cargo. Time limits will be laid down for
approvals/sanctions to ensure transparency in government departments and to ensure
quality of service.
Moving towards an “automated electronic environment”, the global trading community
can now reach for a single source for all policy-related information, which will be available
on the DGFT site. Video conferencing will replace manual filing of documents. This will
be done via digital signatures. A special-purpose vehicle for electronic licence use and
transfer mechanism is being planned.
A six-month time frame has been set for the customs and DGFT to complete EDI linkages.
Once done, manual submission of shipping bills and other documents will be a thing of
the past. Online verification will reduce transaction costs and time.
An Importer Exporter Code (IEC) number will be issued online. Linking the DGFT database
with the income-tax PAN database, by using digital signatures, will do this.
Other e-governance initiatives are also being planned. The effort is to reduce human
interface with DGFT offices.

Source: The Financial Express, April 8, 2005 & www.financialexpress.com.

Box 1.2

Document Alignment is a major trade facilitation activity, whereby trade documents
based on the United Nations Layout Key and thus aligned in a standard format. Deriving
national document subsets from the UN Layout Key rules simplifies trade documentation
on an international scale, bringing considerable benefits to traders.

History
International trade developed over the centuries in an unstructured and ad hoc manner, as
countries exchanged goods and products they excelled in for those, which they lacked.
Documents accompanying these transactions followed a similarly haphazard path, to
where numerous documents in a variety of formats were required for each export shipment.
An order number might appear on the right or left side of a form; addresses could be
shown as lines or blocks.
The situation started to improve in the mid 1960s with the document alignment work
initiated by Sweden, standards developed by the Trade Facilitation Working Party of the
UN/ECE WP.4, and the 1965 publication of the United Kingdom Board of Trade’s Simpler
Export Documents.
Alignment Aims
The objective of an aligned series of documents is to have as many forms as possible
printed on the same size paper and to have common items of information occupying the
same relative position on each form.
Contd...

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