Electronic trade and transport documents and data

31 October 2022
07:30 - 16:00 hrs.,  UNCTAD: UTC +1
Conference
Hotel Hilton 1B Azadlig Avenue, Baku 1000 Baku Azerbaijan

There is a growing shared interest in the countries participating in the UN Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA) to promote trade and transport facilitation in their region and to strengthen digital connectivity along trade corridors. Building on the political support of Central Asian countries, Azerbaijan, as an incoming Chair of SPECA, co-organizes together with UNECE an International High-level Conference entitled “Digital Transformation of Information Exchange in Supply Chains Using United Nations Standards” to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, on 31 October 2022.

07 July 2022
07:00 - 11:30 hrs.,  UNCTAD: UTC +1
Conference
Online

The Twelfth International Seminar on Trade and Transport Facilitation builds on the eleven years of persistent work for trade facilitation in Odessa, Ukraine, and the region, notably in such areas as simplifying procedures, Single Window, port community systems, implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, and innovative projects on digital transport corridors, and data and document exchange in electronic format.

27 March 2023

The war in Ukraine, caused by the aggression of the Russian Federation, led to a humanitarian catastrophe not only in Ukraine, but also provoked a global food crisis. The blockade of Ukrainian seaports and the impossibility of supplying Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products to the world market led to the risk of famine in many countries and a significant increase in world food prices. The limited capacity of existing transport corridors and the impossibility to increase it rapidly by traditional methods in a limited time frame has led to the need to find ways and approaches to improve the efficiency of the existing logistics infrastructure by simplifying procedures and digitalization.

The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) initiated a project to explore the practical application of the data exchange pipeline concept to improve the efficiency of this grain export corridor using UN standards.

The study under this project is based on the results of the UN Development Account COVID-19 projects on digitization of multimodal and cross-sectoral data and document exchange, taking into account the recommendation of the 2022 UNECE Odessa Seminar to support the development of digital multimodal data and document exchange, in the context of the so called “UN Black Sea Grain Initiative” (BSGI).

UNECE publishes a package of important standards for the digitalization of multimodal transport data and document exchange

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.  

16 September 2022

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 Guide on UN/CEFACT Standards

Attachment

13 June 2022

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:

10 October 2022

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.

List of Annexes

Annex A. Summary Table

15 August 2022

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).

List of Annexes

Annex II. Results of the mapping

14 June 2022

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: