Extending PAA Partnership to the African Countries
The Pan-Asian E-Commerce Alliance (PAA) had its 66th Steering Committee meeting in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, welcoming their latest associate member Gainde 2000 from Senegal.
PAA is the first regional e-Commerce alliance in Asia that aims to promote and provide secured, trusted and reliable value-added IT infrastructure and facilities for efficient global trade and logistics services. PAA has expanded it’s membership from Asia, to Oceania, Europe, Middle East and the latest to Africa region.
PAA has implemented the cross border blockchain platform that facilitates secure and seamless paperless transactions, allowing exporters and importers to exchange their international trading documents online, such as declaration of origin, commercial invoice, and packing list.
Through collaborations between Trade-Van (Taiwan), CrimsonLogic (Singapore) and TradeWindow (New Zealand), the traders, logistic firms, and government agencies are allowed to transmit and verify trading documents via the cross border blockchain platform, which will not only reduce trade-related costs but also enhance trade efficiency.
With the disruption of regional supply chains by Covid-19, international traders are looking for ways to remove bottlenecks and speed up trade while maintaining or enhancing safety and security. The cross border blockchain solution helps to shorten the international trade operation time and increase the trust and security in document transmission.
To further strengthen PAA’s collaboration with other international entities, PAA is now a member of the ASEAN Digital Transformation Workgroup (DTWG). During the meeting in Kuala Lumpur, a joint session was also arranged with The African Alliance for E-Commerce (AAEC) to discuss the potential partnership between PAA and AAEC’s members.
In conjunction with the 66th PAA meetings, a public and private dialog session was held between MITI (Ministry of Trade and Industry, Malaysia) and PAA members for the sharing of experience and exchange of information in cross-border trade facilitation initiatives and its challenges.
In this meeting, PAA aimed to further enhance the collaboration between PAA with member’s Government Agencies and regional economy bloc to continue to play a key role in facilitating cross-border digital trade and to bridge more regional economies with secured and seamless trade regulatory document exchange network.