UNCTAD´s Development Solution

Trade Logistics

Transport and Trade Facilitation for Development

Program in a Nutshell

Created in 1996

Continuous activities carried out​

Services

  • Capacity Building and Development
  • Policy Advice, Support and Formulation
  • Technical Assistance and Support
  • Institutional Building and Support to Institutions
  • Building Skills and Training
  • Research, Reports and Evaluations
  • Policy Dialogue

Donors

AfDB, China, EU, Germany, Islamic Development Bank, Sweden, TMEA, UK, United Nations Development Account, USAID

Geographical scope​

Regional Economic Status

Partner : UNCTAD

Contact us

Yes! I want to learn more about how this program could help my business, organization, country or region.

About

To enable e-commerce and unlock its potential for development, you need trade facilitation, efficient and sustainable transport infrastructure and transport services, and a well-developed supporting legal framework. Shipping services, cross-border trade facilitation operations, ports, roads and railways are essential to ensure goods and products are physically delivered in the right condition, on time and at the right price.

This programme helps understand and address the challenges facing trade logistics and leverage underlying opportunities relating to e-commerce. It encompasses optimizing transport and transit operations, creating efficient transport networks, facilitating the financing of sustainable freight transportation, undertakes substantive research and analysis and advises on a wide range of legal and policy issues affecting transport and trade. By supporting the operational, economic, legal and environmental aspects of trade logistics, it helps create a transport system where e-commerce can be more reliable, more efficient and more sustainable. The programme also assists stakeholders from the private and public sectors to participate in trade facilitation reforms to make cross-border e-commerce transparent, fast and predictable.

Services

  • Capacity Building and Development

      • Improve trade logistics, including international transport and trade facilitation, through training activities, best-practice sharing, advisory services and learning material.
      • Training activities, best-practice sharing and learning materials on international transport and trade facilitation to improve trade logistics
      • Technical support in transport and trade facilitation
      • Support to optimize logistics and sustainability of e-commerce on a country- and corridor-level
      • Empower National Trade and Transport Facilitation Committees to implement national, regional and multilateral trade and transport facilitation measures
      • Knowledge and institutional building through training activities in transport and e-trade logistics
      • Training courses for transport operators and policy makers, trade logistics service providers, importers and exporters, shippers, carriers, transport infrastructure planners, government agencies involved in cross-border trade, developers and investors
  • Policy Advice, Support and Formulation

      • Get support designing, developing, adopting and implementing the right transport and trade facilitation policies and legal frameworks to promote e-trade and development.
      • Receive guidance in the elaboration of strategies to implement transport and trade facilitation policies for E-Commerce. Support to design, develop, adopt and implement the right transport and trade facilitation policies and legal frameworks to promote e-trade for development.
      • Advisory services and guidance in the elaboration of strategies to implement transport and trade facilitation policies for E-Commerce.
      • Gap-analysis in relation to international conventions and best practices in trade facilitation, transit, and other relevant areas related to transport and trade.
      • Benefit from legal advice to respond to and resolve complex commercial law issues that arise in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath for contracting parties to commercial contracts throughout the supply chain. These include carefully reviewing their rights and liabilities, considering the inclusion of appropriate clauses for risk-allocation, developing and facilitating the use of electronic alternatives to traditional paper-based transport documents, and increased use of mediation and arbitration, including online.
  • Technical Assistance and Support

      • Benefit from technical support in transport and trade facilitation
      • Get help optimizing the logistics and the sustainability of e-commerce on both a country- and corridor-level
      • Undertake gap-analysis in relation to international conventions and best practices in trade facilitation, transit, and other relevant areas related to transport and trade.
      • Benefit from technical assistance on legal and policy issues in relation to ship-source pollution and mitigating the impacts of climate change.
      • Benefit from legal advice to respond to and resolve complex commercial law issues that arise in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath for contracting parties to commercial contracts throughout the supply chain. These include carefully reviewing their rights and liabilities, considering the inclusion of appropriate clauses for risk-allocation, developing and facilitating the use of electronic alternatives to traditional paper-based transport documents, and increased use of mediation and arbitration, including online.
  • Institutional Building and Support to Institutions

      • Benefit from training and capacity building for managers, decision-makers and executives to support institutional building
      • Empower National Trade and Transport Facilitation Committees to implement national, regional and multilateral trade and transport facilitation measures.
  • Building Skills and Training

      • Build knowledge through training activities in transport and e-trade logistics (including training activities online and the new UNCTAD Trade Facilitation e-Learning Platform)
      • Provide training courses for transport operators and policy makers, trade logistics service providers, importers and exporters, shippers, carriers, transport infrastructure planners, government agencies involved in cross-border trade, developers and investors
      • Provide training for policymakers, SMEs and other stakeholders, particularly in developing countries, to respond to and resolve complex commercial law issues that arise in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath for contracting parties to commercial contracts throughout the supply chain.
  • Research, Reports and Evaluations

      • Get access to useful reports, studies, technical notes, surveys, conferences, references and lectures on trade facilitation, transport and e-trade logistics
      • Benefit from research on areas spanning shipping, ports, multimodal transport, financing sustainable transport and trade logistics infrastructure and services, related legal and policy issues, and trade facilitation.
      • Learn from different country-experiences and best practices in the establishment and maintenance of National Trade and Transport Facilitation Committees available in the on-line UNCTAD Database on National Trade Facilitation Committees.
      • Access on-line statistics on international shipping, ports, seaborne trade and connectivity.
  • Policy Dialogue

      • Use consensus-building activities and intergovernmental machinery to exchange views, discuss relevant issues, and formulate policy options and solutions

Highlights

  • Trade Facilitation Programme

    • Ultimately, the Trade Facilitation Programme of UNCTAD aims at enhancing trade facilitation processes and the competitiveness of developing countries, including LDCs, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States. Its goal is to ensure an increased implementation of trade facilitation reforms by developing countries, improving their capacity to comply with international and regional rules and standards relating to trade facilitation, including World Trade Organization commitments. One of the programme focuses is to improve decision-making capacity and implementing skills of national trade facilitation committees to fulfil their mandate.

      UNCTAD provides an intensive professional programme for the secretariat and members of such committees, namely the Empowerment Programme for National Trade Facilitation Committees. The main objective is to help the committees to implement, in a coordinated manner, trade facilitation reforms, including the provisions of the Agreement on Trade Facilitation, and to be able to monitor implementation. With a view to ratification and implementation of the Agreement, UNCTAD support covers assessments of technical assistance needs and preparation of categorization of provisions of the Agreement; tailored training in trade, transit and transport facilitation; advisory services on ratification of the Agreement; and assistance in the creation and sustainable operation of national trade facilitation committees.

      The Trade Facilitation Programme also assists developing countries in the implementation of trade facilitation measures, for instance: establishing a legal framework for trade-related single windows, undertaking simplification of trade-related procedures, training national transit coordinators or supporting regional trade facilitation initiatives. The success of the programme resides in its strong cooperation not only with external partners such as the World Customs Organization and the International Trade Centre, but also with other experts within UNCTAD, working on the crossroads of trade facilitation with customs automation, e-commerce or non-tariff measures.

  • Sustainable and Resilient Transport and Logistics Programme

    • The importance of freight transport as a trade enabler, engine of growth and driver of social development cannot be overemphasized. At the same time, the adverse impacts of freight transport activity on human health, the environment and climate are a cause for concern.

      If left unchecked, unsustainable freight transport patterns will undermine the effective achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

      UNCTAD has mainstreamed sustainability and climate resilience considerations in its work programme on transport and trade logistics. The overall objective is to assist the effective integration of developing countries into trading networks and transport systems. This will facilitate their participation in value chains through efficient, reliable, cost-effective, well-connected, socially inclusive, environmentally sustainable and climate-resilient freight transport systems. With over 80 per cent of world merchandise trade by volume carried by sea, maritime transport is a particularly crucial catalyst for sustainable development.

  • Studies and Reports on Transport Law and Policy

Publications

For Whom

ParliamentariansPolicy makersLegal professionalsBusiness AssociationsCorporationsMSMEsSMEsResearchersExpertsDecision makersMiddle Managers

UN SDGs

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