UN/CEFACT to produce recommendations to support implementation of WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement

Trade facilitation measures contribute to reducing trade costs, thus fostering economic growth and employment. In order to put all the actors in international trade around the same table, UN/CEFACT is completing a set of recommendations which will support implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (WTO TFA). These measures can be applied by countries around the world and their design has been fine-tuned in order to complement outputs produced by other key international players in trade facilitation, pursuant to the open and effective cooperation policy put in place by UNECE. UN/CEFACT’s trade facilitation tools will provide key support to countries’ efforts both as they plan their commitments under the WTO TFA and as they implement these measures after the TFA has come into force. 

This was one of the key topics of the 25^th Forum of UN/CEFACT, which gathered   some 130 experts from more than 30 countries, international governmental organizations and the private sector this week in Geneva.

The Forum also brought some major advances in the fields of agriculture, tourism, supply chain, insurance, procurement and finance. These include: improving the traceability of animal and animal products by fostering related information exchange; developing a data reference model to facilitate multimodal transport; and defining how trade finance can be integrated into current trade facilitation frameworks and practices.