Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Trade Facilitation

What is Trade Facilitation?

Trade facilitation (TF)* deals with issues such as border infrastructure, customs procedures, non-tariff measures and other. In particular, the shipment process faces four types of procedures: commercial, transport, regulatory and financial. Each process can in turn increase the overall trade cost as it is delayed due to complicated non-transparent and sometimes costly procedures. Even worse is when such delays on every step happen chronically. This increases the costs so much that the firms become less competitive and may decide to slow down the trade flows. How does trade facilitation work in practice? Well, long delays at the border cause extra costs for the business in terms of losing a customer for future orders. The products might not arrive on time and the customer might not need it anymore or will reduce the price for the goods. If the goods being shipped are agricultural and/or perishable, they simply might not stay as fresh as they are and their value in terms of price pa...