Int’l Chamber Of Commerce Teams With Singapore Gov’t In Digital Commerce Push

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the government of Singapore have teamed up, along with other industry partners, on an initiative to speed up digital adoption in global trade and commerce, according to an ICC release. 

The decision happened at a meeting at the World Economic Forum, taking place this week in Davos, Switzerland. The parties involved all signed a cooperation agreement with the intention to “accelerate adoption of digital technologies in trade and commerce.”

The partnership will help to move the issues forward, as it is a partnership between public and private organizations. The intention is to move from a paper-based system, which has been used for decades, into a digital system.

The move will “create enormous potential value based on time and operational cost savings combined with the greatly reduced incidence of fraud and human error,” the release said.

Some of the organizations involved are APRIL, DBS Bank, Marubeni Corporation, Mastercard, Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsui & Co. Ltd., Mizuho Bank Ltd., MUFG Bank, Noble, NTT DATA,  PSA International, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa, Standard Chartered Bank, Sumitomo Corporation, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Tokio Marine and Trafigura.

“Digital platforms will lower existing barriers to international trade in the coming years and enable many more businesses to participate in the new global economy,” said ICC Secretary General John W.H. Denton AO. “In line with ICC’s 21st century purpose, we are committed to enabling the broadest possible adoption of these digital technologies and support the development and recognition of universally accepted best practice standards for digitalisation, based on global consensus and the work being done by our partners today.”

Singapore is one of the largest trading hubs in the world, and it is using this fact to push the process of digitization along. The conglomeration of organizations are collaborating on developing TradeTrust, a “multilateral, open legal and technical framework, that enables inter-operability across different trade platforms and formats for the exchange of digital trade documents on a public blockchain.”