TFAD - Trade Facilitation Agreement Database



left-914400003072765302450WTO’s Committee on Trade Facilitation – Summary of India’s presentation020000WTO’s Committee on Trade Facilitation – Summary of India’s presentationicat31242001469390 11th – 12th February 201900 11th – 12th February 2019-31758375015Chairman’s briefing note00Chairman’s briefing noteNational Committee on Trade Facilitation - India’s ExperienceTrade Facilitation Agreement [TFA] is the first ever multilateral agreement that aims to simplify customs regulations for cross-border movement of goods and seek to enhance transparency in exim trade. India actively participated in the negotiations of drafting text of the agreement and ratified the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) on 22nd April 2016, which came into force on 22nd February 2017. 72.3% of total commitments were classified under Category “A” which means that implementation of these commitments was there on the ground at the time of entry into force, while remaining 27.7% of commitments were classified under category “B” for which a ‘5 years’ transition was taken. India did not classify any of the commitments under category “C”. While implementing TFA, the major questions faced by Indian Policy makers was to strike a balance between faster and smoother clearance with minimum cost and higher compliance. To overcome this challenge and to ensure all stakeholders are onboard with this objective, India constituted a National Committee of Trade Facilitation (NCTF) headed by the top most Civil Servant in the country i.e Cabinet Secretary, which would give this work credibility as well as authority in order to coordinate amongst the agencies [NCTF is mandated under Art 23.2 of the TFA]. The main principles followed while establishing NCTF was wide representation from not only Government of India machinery but also Private players such as commerce and industry associations, Freight forwarders, Custom House Agents etc. Another important principle on which NCTF works is the smooth and unhindered flow of information from the policy makers to the actual users and from users to policy makers in the form of feedback. NCTF is, therefore, follows a two-way circular approach in solving problems, which has been quite effective since its inception.In order to achieve the objectives of NCTF, a three tiered structure was envisaged – NCTF at the apex level; Steering Committee at the middle level; and adhoc Working Groups at the lower level. At present we have 5 such Working groups. In its early meetings, one of the major achievement of NCTF was to develop and adopt a National Trade Facilitation Action Plan (NTFAP) for 2017-2020 containing specific activities to further ease out the bottlenecks to trade. The action points in the Plan is mapped to the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) Articles and aligned to our policy objectives on improving the Ease of Doing Business. Further, in order to monitor these action points, an online platform has also been developed to keep track of the updates with real time reporting through MIS. A National Time Release Study is ongoing at present under the aegis of NCTF to ascertain and work upon various time stamps for further reduction of cargo dwell time.Consistent trade facilitation efforts have contributed to a substantive improvement of India’s performance in Trading Across Borders indicator from 146 in 2017 to 80 in 2018 and 68 in 2019 as per the World Bank’s Doing Business Report (DBR). ********right-91726500 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download