United Nations
Transport and trade connectivity in the age of pandemics
This webinar follows the tradition, since 2010, of UNECE’s Odessa seminars on trade facilitation, single window, and data sharing along digital trade corridors.
UNECE has been working on developing these standards and supporting pilot projects since 2020 in the framework of the UNTTC high-profile multi-agency United Nations Development Account project on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade and transport connectivity. The standards cover key documents accompanying goods: consignment notes, bills of lading, and additional documents supporting transport of goods by rail, road, sea, air, and inland water.
The UNTTC Training course on UN/CEFACT Standards was developed as part of the United Nations response to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic under the United Nations multiagency project “Transport and Trade Connectivity in the Age of Pandemics: UN solutions for contactless, seamless and collaborative transport and trade”.
This Training course consists of the following elements:
The digitalization of the supply chain is the dominant trend in international trade and transport at present and the main tool for facilitating trade procedures. Due to the essence of the supply chain as a process of interaction between many parties within many jurisdictions, ensuring interoperability plays a key role both in the supply chain and in the digitalization processes. In this regard, the development, maintenance and adoption of standards at the international level play an extremely important role. This explains the continued focus on standardization in trade and transport facilitation by UN institutions: notably, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT).
UNECE (and UN/CEFACT as a subsidiary intergovernmental body of the UNECE) has developed a range of tools for trade and transport facilitation:
During this consultancy project, the Consultant analyzed the data requirements in a sample transport document aligned to the UN/CEFACT Multimodal Transport Reference Data Model (MMT RDM), the European Union Customs Data Model (EUCDM) and the WCO Data Model. The objective was to produce data mapping between these instruments, with a view to propose practical solution for using in regulatory information systems (such as regulatory Single Window, Customs systems) the information in the package of standards for the digitalization of multimodal transport data and document exchange.
The knowledge collected in this project will be used in both practical pilot projects for the implementation of the UN/CEFACT standards and the future work on data pipelines. It also makes contribution to the harmonization and standardization of data exchange in international transport, trade and logistics to encourage electronic data exchange in building back better after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The objective of the current project is further development of the digital transport documents that could provide seamless information flows accompanying cargo flows between countries along the GUAM transport corridor. Due to its position in the middle of the cargo transport routes between Europe and Asia, the use of UN/CEFACT standards and recommendations for cargo information sharing along this route makes much sense.
The focus of the project is on the practical application of the data models and standards to facilitate real-world transport operations that take place along this transport route, in particular, in transforming from trade and transport documents, represented in UN/CEFACT multimodal transport reference data model (MMT RDM) to customs documents, represented in the data model of World Customs Organization (WCO) through the UN/CEFACT Cross Border Management data model (CBM).
Annex II. Results of the mapping
The Data mapping of the IFTMIN UNEDIFACT message and the SMGS and CIMSMGS railway consignment notes to the UNCEFACT MMT RDM was developed as part of the United Nations response to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic under the United Nations multiagency project “Transport and Trade Connectivity in the Age of Pandemics: UN solutions for contactless, seamless and collaborative transport and trade”.
This electronic document equivalent Standard Package consists of the following elements:
The current project has been initiated with the main objectives to support the development of digital multimodal transport corridors, increase the harmonization and standardization of data exchange in international transport and logistics, encourage electronic data exchange and thus to reduce people-to-people contacts during the COVID-19 crisis and in the post-pandemic recovery by using the relevant standards and Multimodal Reference Data Model (MMT RDM) of the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT).
This report covers the following main tasks and outputs:
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant impact on humankind and on global commerce. Ports and port communities have experienced major changes to normal operating environments.
The strategies used by ports to remain open and continue to facilitate sustainable economic development throughout the pandemic may provide useful lessons for policymakers, particularly in relation to the protocols and innovative measures that have been employed to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the movement of imports and exports as well as ships’ crew and essential port workers.
Key points:
Co-organized by Ministry of Fisheries & Trade and ESCAP