Co-organized by Ministry of Fisheries & Trade and ESCAP
A national study on readiness assessment for cross-border paperless trade will be conducted in Tuvalu. The study will cover technical and legal readiness assessment, which will then lead to development of recommendations and an individual action plan.
Co-organized by Ministry of Trade and Economic Development & Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
In moving forward in the area of trade facilitation and paperless trade in Tonga, legal and technical readiness assessments for cross-border paperless trade will be conducted, under a United Nations ESCAP project as part of the joint UN Development Account project entitled “Transport and trade connectivity in the age of pandemics”.
This report provides an assessment of the Philippines’ readiness for cross-border paperless trade, i.e., the conduct of international trade based on electronic data and documents.
A team of experts conducted this assessment following readiness checklists developed by the ESCAP Interim Intergovernmental Steering Group on Cross-Border Paperless Trade Facilitation, of which the Philippines is a member. National consultation on facilitating cross-border paperless trade was co-organized by the Philippine Bureau of Customs (BOC) and ESCAP on 8 March 2021, when preliminary findings from the visits and interviews were further reviewed, consolidated and validated.
The report is co-published by ESCAP and the Philippine Bureau of Customs (BOC).
The complete set of Cross-Border Paperless Trade Readiness Assessment reports can be accessed here.
COVID-19 has highlighted the key role of trade and transport in fighting the pandemic. In this context, ESCAP, together with the World Health Organization, is implementing the research project “From Lab to Jab: Improving Asia-Pacific’s Readiness to Produce and Deliver Vaccines” to better understand the determinants of vaccine production and delivery in Asia-Pacific, with a focus on cross-border cooperation, trade, and transportation.
The course is designed to help negotiations of provisions for sustainable development in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The objective is to improve FTAs in order for trade to contribute to sustainable development goals – better-designed sustainable development provisions would guide international trade in achieving greater societal and environmental benefits besides economic interests.
This Handbook explores options for provisions that could be used in future RTAs to better guide how trade could be conducted during future crises. It covers all the major rules areas in RTAs, including Essential Goods and Services, Trade Facilitation, SPS and TBT Measures, Intellectual Property Rights, Digital Trade, Transparency, and Development. The options for provisions include “baseline”, “baseline+”, and “discretionary” options, depending on the extent of obligations, protection, resilience and policy space provided by those provisions.
UN Course based on the Handbook: https://www.unescap.org/training/rta-ttcp
More information about the Initiative is available HERE.
Introduction
This Online repository provides access to written contributions submitted by participants to the Policy Hackathon on Model Provisions for Trade in Times of Crisis and Pandemic in Regional and Other Trade Agreements. The contributions featured in this Online repository have been made available as received and are under the sole responsibility of their author(s).
A brief overview of contributions is also available here.
To help the region moving forward in accelerating trade digitalization, ESCAP, in cooperation with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), and with the support of the United Nations Network of Experts for Paperless Trade and Transport in Asia and the Pacific (UNNExT), organizes a webinar Series on accelerating cross-border paperless trade facilitation.