Electronic system to cut time for imports, exports

The Electronic Transaction Development Agency (ETDA) has set aside 16 million baht to spend on establishing an online international transactions processing standard for cross-border trade.

Called the national single window (NSW) system, the standard is expected to improve efficiency of the country’s import and export procedures, reducing them from 15 days to 3-5 days by 2015, said Surangkana Wayuparb, director of the ETDA.

The NSW is an electronic system that provided efficient exchange of traderelated data and documents in electronic form through a single submission of data.

The budget is part of the agency’s fiscal budget of 416 million baht.

Mrs Surangkana said 36 import and export-related organisations, both private and public, have connected with the NSW.

But these organisations still lacked standard international trade statistics in seven categories comprising trans- portation, ports, packages and packaging materials, country codes, international commercial terms, currencies and measurement units.

The lack of the standard caused higher logistic costs and business opportunity losses, she said.

Mrs Surangkana said exports represent 70% of the country’s gross domestic product, so Thailand needs to quickly improve internal import and export transaction processing to improve the country’s competitiveness.

Ten Asean countries are also implementing the NSW to provide a complete paperless trading system in order to shorten document procedures for crossborder trade and reduce costs, she added.

The EDTA last year set up the Thailand National Root Certificate Authority (NRCA), a centre that connects all electronic certificates and ensures their interoperability.

Mrs Surangkana said the ETDA is aimed to become the nation’s e-transaction regulator by 2016 to oversee all electronics services.