SITPRO has today published its first Five Year Strategy, setting out a vision for trade facilitation between now and 2013. SITPRO's strategy is focused on four business areas: electronic business and documentation; international trade practices and procedures; trade agreements and capacity building; and trade facilitation for the services sector.
In its vision for the next five years, SITPRO sees:
- The establishment of a clear and accepted international standards architecture, with an unstoppable momentum on the way to integrated paperless trading (or straight-through processing – STP) using such standards;
- Improved border agency co-ordination incorporating an effective balance between border security and trade facilitation with mutual recognition of authorised trader schemes, and measurable progress with the European Modernised Customs Code;
- Trade agreements containing provisions to encourage trade facilitation measures to be introduced in countries around the world, supported by capacity building;
- The recognition of trade facilitation for the services sector as an important issue in its own right, as well as complementing trade in goods.
SITPRO's Chairman, Norman Rose, said, "It is important that we take a longer term view of the horizon for trade facilitation and plan our business around it, so that we are not only reacting to proposals put forward by others but leading business and governments towards an international trading environment that maximises the benefits of trade facilitation measures and minimises the barriers to legitimate trade."
The strategy will reinforce SITPRO's role as the world's premier trade facilitation agency and a centre of excellence in this field.Notes for Editors
SITPRO is the UK's trade facilitation agency, established in 1970 to simplify international trade procedures. Much of its work has focused upon improving the procedures at ports and borders, looking at issues such as improving the arrangements for inspecting goods at the border and streamlining the submission of data to government, including the development of the UK International Trade Single Window, a tool that will allow a business to submit to one place all the data required by Government to clear import or export goods.
SITPRO is a non-departmental public body funded by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) and undertakes policy work at national, European and international levels. For further information, visit SITPRO's website at http://www.sitpro.org.uk/ .
Copies of the Five Year Strategy can be obtained at www.sitpro.org.uk/about/fiveyear.pdf or in hard copy on request.
SITPRO News Release - 28 April 2008
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