Sri Lanka intends to become a benchmark for an integrated, paperless international trade thereby reduce time and cost currently spent by traders in preparing and submitting information and documents to multiple border regulatory agencies, with the implementation of National Single Window (NSW).
These views were expressed by Dr. R.H.S Samaratunge, Secretary to the Treasury, Ministry of Finance, at the second of four public-private consultations on the establishment of a National Single Window (NSW) in Sri Lanka, organized by the Geneva-based International Trade Centre (ITC), in association with Sri Lanka’s National Trade Facilitation Committee (NTFC) in Colombo yesterday.
Dr. Samaratunge, said further, Sri Lanka has ideally positioned to become a regional trade and logistics hub and is striving to make its economy more interconnected with regional and global markets.
“This excise is undertaken to compliment the work being done by the World Bank to prepare the blueprint for Sri Lanka’s single window initiative and is a timely intervention as it is important to obtain views of all stakeholders at the very initial stage of the implementation process.”
“Improving cross border formalities is one of the key successful factors for Sri Lanka, Dr. Samarathunga said adding that, “as of today, Sri Lanka is ranked 111th among 190 economies in ease of doing business index. And the government has set up eight task forces, based on World Bank’s ease of doing business program with a view to improving the present investment climate.”
According to Dr. Samaratunga, the success of NSW will depend on careful implementation and close co-operation between many public and private stakeholders who are in international transactions.
P. S. M. Charles, Chairperson NTFC, Director General of Customs, speaking at the event noted that it is imperative to identify the governance mechanism and response model during the development and operational phase of NSW. In this endeavor, ITC has prepared a discussion paper under the theme of governance mechanism of the national single window for the trade Sri Lanka, Charles noted.
The discussion paper highlights organizations structures for the governance mechanism during the development and implementation phase.
In addition to that, ITC has agreed for financing capacity building activities of customs on timely study, risk management, post clearance audit and etc.