As detailed in the press release, the partnership project is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office and aims to provide a cheaper, faster, easier, and more sustainable trading environment between the two countries. The project is set to be delivered by C4DTI in collaboration with the Centre for Applied Sustainable Transition Law (CASTL), who will provide both legal expertise and project facilitation.
Based on information provided in the announcement, C4DTI is set to offer technical assistance to Thailand in order to support the removal of legal barriers and alignment of national lay with the UN Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR). This will enable commercial trade documents to be handled in digital form and the trading system to go paperless, which in turn will help SMEs to trade at a decreased cost, thus removing the unnecessary complexities associated with paper-based processes and also expediting the flow of trade transactions.
Furthermore, the current trade system is negatively impacted by burdensome, paper-heavy processes, as they act as a barrier to the flow of transactional information and to economic growth. The announcement details that ICC and Commonwealth studies estimate that legal reform is set to deliver USD 9 trillion in trade growth across the G7 and USD 1.2 trillion across the Commonwealth. This is in addition to an 80% cut in trade transaction costs, a 75% decrease in processing time, and a 50% cut in the trade finance gap (USD 1.7 trillion globally).
As of now, up to 27 paper documents can be leveraged in a typical transaction, taking up to three months to process, all of which could be completed in hours, if digitalised; at any given time, 4 billion paper documents float through the trade system in total.
C4DTI is also collaborating with Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority, the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and the Department for International Trade in order to test and connect digital trade systems between the UK and Singapore. As detailed in the press release, the enterprise’s collaboration with both Thailand and Singapore, the two largest ecommerce markets in the ASEAN region, is an important factor in the country’s efforts of strengthening and expanding trade ties with Asia.
ICC UK representatives stated that the partnership is an example of the gains that the UK and other nations can have when working together to modernise trade systems and remove unnecessary paper, with the project thought to help them align their efforts across both government and private sectors and expedite digital transformation across the trade system.
ETDA officials added that the collaboration comes as an opportunity for ETDA MDES, government agencies and private sectors in Thailand to learn about guidelines and best international practices, exchange views on the importance of digital trade, and find solutions that would increase economic value.
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