Indian Chamber of Commerce proposes paperless trade to BIMSTEC

New Delhi, Jan 31 (KNN) Paperless trade can make business transactions more convenient while ensuring regulatory compliance and improving the competitiveness of countries and their industries to move towards paperless chains, said President of Indian Chamber of Commerce, Pradeep Sureka at Integrating BIMSTEC 2022 event.

He also emphasized on  block chain based solutions, which is definitely a more cost effective way of trading internationally. 

Navigation through multiple platforms, e-filing of documents, to avail tax benefits causes hardships. Hence providing ease of compliance is one of the key objectives of the Government. 

To cover an integrated all related compliance under one umbrella Indian customs and electronic gateway and national portal of Indian customs is offering an e-filing service to the trade, cargo carriers and providing a centralized filing system for transactions related to cross border trade, SEZ’s etc. 

Trade facilitation is a vital area for all policy makers going forward," he added.

He also mentioned how restricted measures affected the global supply chain as countries had to impose drastic measures including lockdowns, travel restrictions, border closures, airport shutdowns, delaying entry for ships etc.

He said, “Though we have seen, the effect of Omicron is not that fatal, however there is no guarantee that a fresh pandemic will not cause any more disruptions”. 

He mentioned how the effect on the economies of countries can be mitigated by generating appropriate solutions. 

“One way is to strengthen regional trade thereby limiting the physical boundaries of disruptions," he said.

BIMSTEC was established to leverage the geographical advantage to strengthen economic & physical connectivity through more trade, investments, travel and exchange among member countries. The current trade among the BIMSTEC members has the potential to grow 5-6 folds.