Convening alongside the annual World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) joined the Singapore Government and a growing consortium of key industry partners to accelerate the digitalization of global trade and commerce.
The Singapore Government and major firms from key industries have signed a historic cooperation agreement to facilitate and accelerate adoption of digital technologies in trade and commerce. The global industry leaders participating in the agreement include DBS Bank, Marubeni Corporation, Mastercard, PSA International, Standard Chartered Bank, and, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.
This public-private partnership between global organisations will be a significant leap forward to shift international trade from a paper-based system to digitally-enabled trade. It promises significant potential value based on time and operational cost savings combined with the greatly reduced incidence of fraud and human error.
According to John W.H. Denton AO, ICC Secretary General, “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.”
He also voiced ICC’s support for “the development and recognition of universally accepted best practice standards for digitalization, based on global consensus and the work being done by our partners today.”
As one of the largest global trading hubs, Singapore is capitalizing on its strong networks to bring together an efficient and unified process of digitalized trade. The country is partnering various international organisations, governments and industry players on the development of 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. This strategic initiative is led by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) with the Maritime Port Authority (MPA), and supported by partner agency, Enterprise Singapore.
