Trade Facilitation at the World...
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www.worldbank.org/trade www.worldbank.org/tradefacilitation The World Bank Group International Trade Department Trade Facilitation at the World Bank National Logistics Strategies to address logistics bottlenecks and inefficiencies in infrastructure, services, and procedures by looking at market structure, regulation, and competition policy for logistics and transport services, including trucking and freight forwarders. In-depth national logistics strategies were undertaken in Morocco, Tunisia, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil. The Trade Logistics Advisory Services to respond to country demands to improve the trading across borders Doing Business Indicators—with ongoing pilots in Rwanda, Liberia, and Colombia. The Logistics Performance Indicator (LPI): Tariff Reform Impact Simulation Tool (TRIST): An interactive Excel spreadsheet, TRIST to simulate the short term implications of tariff reform on fiscal revenue, imports, protection, and prices. So far it has been developed for several countries, including Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Tunisia, Morocco, Nigeria, Mauritius, Bolivia. The World Bank work on trade aims to help developing countries improve their trade potential by: Increasing their market access and make global and regional arrangements, and developed country policies more development friendly Increasing incentives for private investment for private investment in trade -with focus on reforms in trade policy and tax policy, and reducing non-tariff barriers Reducing cost of trading by removing obstacles at the border and behind the border, and Increasing export competitiveness and productivity through innovation and specialization What is the World Bank doing on Trade Facilitation? Trade Facilitation plays an important role in development as it enhances countries’ competitiveness, allowing them to trade goods and services on time and with low transaction costs. Many developing countries may not be able to take advantage of those opportunities unless they can make investments to develop their trading capacities such as in ports and roads improvements, and improved efficiency in customs administration. Geneva Office 3 Chemin Louis-Dunant Post Office Box 66 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland A Package of Services on Trade Facilitation The World Bank Group International Trade Department Washington Office 1818 H Street NW Washington DC 20433 USA A NETWORK OF EXPERTS A dedicated team within the World Bank is driving the trade facilitation and logistics effort. This team comprises of economists, transport engineers, and customs specialists who can provide sharp expertise to clients. The group can also tap other resources within the World Bank Group and among the Bank’s extensive network of partners. Contact: [email protected] Customs Modernization Handbook: An updated Border Management Reform Handbook is currently under preparation and will provide tools for integrated border management approaches. Port Reform Toolkit provides policymakers with an effective decision support to direct, and regulate port services in developing countries. It also draws on practical institutional designs for increasing private sector involvement. It has been applied in countries such as Mauritius, Madagascar, and Brazil. The LPI ranks countries according to key indicators of trade facilitation. It has generated a lot of interest from countries and triggered demands for trade facilitation strategies and reforms— more recently from Brazil and Indonesia. www.worldbank.org/lpi It provides lessons and best practice from reform initiatives in customs valuation, rules of origin, duty drawback, risk management, and the use of information technology.
Transcript of Trade Facilitation at the World...
www.wor ldbank.org/t rade www.wor ldbank.org/t radefac i l i ta t ion
The World Bank Group International Trade Department
Trade Facilitation at the World Bank
National Logistics Strategies to address logistics bottlenecks and inefficiencies in infrastructure, services, and procedures by looking at market structure, regulation, and competition policy for logistics and transport services, including trucking and freight forwarders. In-depth national logistics strategies were undertaken in Morocco, Tunisia, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil.
The Trade Logistics Advisory Services to respond to country demands to improve the trading across borders Doing Business Indicators—with ongoing pilots in Rwanda, Liberia, and Colombia.
The Logistics Performance Indicator (LPI):
Tariff Reform Impact Simulation Tool (TRIST): An interactive Excel spreadsheet, TRIST to simulate the short term implications of tariff reform on fiscal revenue, imports, protection, and prices. So far it has been developed for several countries, including Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Tunisia, Morocco, Nigeria, Mauritius, Bolivia.
The World Bank work on trade aims to help developing countries improve their trade potential by:
Increasing their market access and make global and regional arrangements, and developed country policies more development friendly
Increasing incentives for private investment for private investment in trade -with focus on reforms in trade policy and tax policy, and reducing non-tariff barriers
Reducing cost of trading by removing obstacles at the border and behind the border, and
Increasing export competitiveness and productivity through innovation and specialization
What is the World Bank doing on Trade Facilitation? Trade Facilitation plays an important role in development as it enhances countries’ competitiveness, allowing them to trade goods and services on time and with low transaction costs. Many developing countries may not be able to take advantage of those opportunities unless they can make investments to develop their trading capacities such as in ports and roads improvements, and improved efficiency in customs administration.
Geneva Office3 Chemin Louis-Dunant
Post Office Box 661211 Geneva 20, Switzerland
A Package of Services on Trade Facilitation
The World Bank Group International Trade Department
Washington Office 1818 H Street NW Washington DC 20433 USA
A NETWORK OF EXPERTS
A dedicated team within the World Bank is driving the trade facilitation and logistics effort. This team comprises of economists, transport engineers, and
customs specialists who can provide sharp expertise to clients. The group can also tap other
resources within the World Bank Group and among the Bank’s extensive network of partners.
Contact: [email protected]
Customs Modernization Handbook:
An updated Border Management Reform Handbook is currently under preparation and will provide tools for integrated border management approaches.
Port Reform Toolkit provides policymakers with an effective decision support to direct, and regulate port services in developing countries. It also draws on practical institutional designs for increasing private sector involvement. It has been applied in countries such as Mauritius, Madagascar, and Brazil.
The LPI ranks countries according to key indicators of trade facilitation. It has generated a lot of interest from countries and triggered demands for trade facilitation strategies and reforms—
more recently from Brazil and Indonesia. www.worldbank.org/lpi
It provides lessons and best practice from reform initiatives in customs valuation, rules of origin, duty drawback, risk management, and the use of information technology.
Trade Facilitation at the World Bank
The World Bank is engaged in several awareness raising activities including through strategic Partnerships
Support for the WTO Trade Facilitation negotiations in partnership with the WTO, WCO, IMF and UNCTAD, helping developing countries respond to the negotiating proposals by leading the national needs assessments process—30 countries covered so far;
The Bank launched the Global Facilitation Partnership for Transportation and Trade (GFP) in 1999, a network of 250 public and private partners (core partners include the WCO, UNCTAD, UNECE, UNIDO, IRU, and TIACA). The GFP has become the reference forum on trade and transport facilitation where participants work together to design and undertake specific programs, create knowledge, and support trade facilitation training opportunities. www.gfptt.org
The World Bank launched the Trade and Transit Facilitation program to address the specific problems of overland transit trade, especially in the context of landlocked countries. It involves UNECE, IRU, and UNCTAD. This program includes research and case studies on the cost structure of transit supply chains and trade corridor performance. This program directly supports the UN initiative for developing landlocked countries, the Almaty Programme of Actions.
Given its development focus, the World Bank has developed a cross-cutting approach to Trade Facilitation to effectively address the bottlenecks and inefficiencies of developing countries’ supply chains. The main areas of focus include:
Infrastructure investment
Customs modernization and border-crossing environment
Streamlining of documentary requirements and information flows
Ports efficiency
Logistics and transport services: regulation and competitiveness
Transit and multimode transport
Transport security
The World Bank is scaling up the Trade Facilitation Agenda
The World Bank is setting up a Trade Facilitation Facility (TFF) to boost the Bank capacity to deliver assistance to developing countries. The TFF will aim to:
Better manage demand for trade facilitation activities within the Bank Group by improving coordination of trade facilitation activities and responses to governments among the various World Bank Group units;
Raise the profile of trade facilitation within the Bank and support further lending in this area;
Catalyze the Aid for Trade agenda by enhancing capacity to scale up work on trade facilitation and bring together external partners that can help implement activities and projects; and
Provide a multilateral initiative to assist both low income and least developed countries.
The World Bank offers a Package of Services on Trade Facilitation
Several services, products, and tools have been developed and used towards improving trade facilitation:
The Trade and Transport Facilitation Audit (TTFA): TTFA allows an initial diagnostics of constraints and has been implemented in over 40 countries over the past 5 years. This tool is currently being updated to reflect lessons learned.
Assessments of trade facilitation in landlocked and transit developing countries with a focus on re-engineering of transit regimes, corridor management and performance monitoring, and institutional strengthening of regional and sub-regional stakeholder fora to develop efficient transit transport systems. A pilot technical assistance program is being implemented in Central Africa to redesign the transit regime; another pilot is starting in Southern Africa.
Results based on outputs and current World Bank projects are published in the report Improving Trade and Transport for Landlocked Developing Countries (October 2008).
