The UK government’s Electronic Trade Documents Act came into force today. It received royal assent on July 20 this year. The Act is being widely perceived as having the potential to transform shipping, international trade and trade finance.

It encourages parties to adopt new technologies to reduce practical difficulties with hardcopy ones, to streamline trade, shipping and finance, and to generate growth.

It permits electronic trade documents to be ‘possessed’ in the same way as hardcopy documents, provided they are held on a ‘reliable system’ so that their authenticity, singularity and integrity can be verified. This was not possible earlier as a matter of English law.

It will take time and investment from market participants to build confidence in the infrastructure, necessary to make digital international trade operate smoothy, but the Act is a positive step towards that transition.

The UK government estimates that the Act could generate a net benefit of £1.14 billion in the British economy over the next decade for UK businesses trading across the world.

Paper documents and electronic documents, however, are likely to co-exist for some time.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) urged businesses who want to boost their exports and reduce costs to quickly embrace the change.

“This new era is starting in the UK, but we can also act as a beacon, leading towards further digitalisation of trade across the world. We now need to see other governments accelerating their work to digitalise border processes. In our Trade Manifesto, we called on the UK Government to work with business to ensure 60 per cent of the UK’s exports are carried out digitally by the end of the decade,” BCC head of trade policy William Bain said in a statement.

“The whole Chamber Network has already risen to this challenge and has switched to using Digital Certificates of Origin for the UK,” he added.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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