DUSHANBE, January 24, 2014, Asia-Plus —
UNECE Weekly
, January 20-24, 2014 # 561 reports that UNECE has been helping Central Asian countries implement trade facilitation measures, including advanced systems such as the Single Window, since 2000. Yet, when it comes to such complex issues as trade facilitation, results and success may come years later. This is what happened with the launch of a Single Window in Uzbekistan, which was reported as one of the country”s success stories in the World Bank”s
Doing Business 2014
report. According to the report, “Uzbekistan reduced the time to export by introducing a single window for customs clearance and reduced the number of documents needed for each import transaction.”
UNECE played a major role in this development, launching initial ideas, and involving a number of international development partners, such as the international development agencies of Germany (GIZ), the United States of America (USAID), the Asian Development Bank, as well as UNCTAD, UNDP, and experts such as Sweden”s Matts Wiktor. Currently, a project with the Korean International Cooperation Agency KOICA aims at further developing Uzbekistan”s national Single Window.
The
Doing Business
report measures the efficiency of a country”s economy as a function of the time and cost needed to move cargo to and from the nearest port. As a “double landlocked” county, Uzbekistan is at a clear disadvantage. Yet the country”s 189th place in the report”s Trading across Borders index indicates that Central Asian countries have to work together on a regional basis to reap the real benefits from trade facilitation.
Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are also implementing Single Window projects. The Azerbaijani system was launched three years ago, and the first phase of Tajikistan”s system started in November 2013. The Chair of the SPECA Project Working Group on Trade, Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Tajikistan, Saidrahmon Nazriyev, has suggested that developing a regional trade development and facilitation strategy becomes a priority for 2014.
