Despite the benefits that trade facilitation initiatives such as the introduction of an eSW may yield for a wide range of stakeholders including clearing agents, importers and exporters and government agencies, like most trade reforms, the links between these types of investments and poverty reduction are not so clearly defined. A recent study (Shepherd, 2014) has found that trade facilitation interventions can have direct effects on poverty by altering relative prices in agriculture and manufacturing. Although the study has not focused exclusively on eSW, the findings could be used to understand some of intended and unintended effects of such intervention on the poor. Trade facilitation efforts that reduce importing and exporting prices have different effects in different groups and may create winners and losers even among the poor. The nature and size of the effect depend on whether or not the particular groups of people are net producers or net consumers of traded goods, and whether or not these are exported. Exporters tend to benefit from trade facilitation interventions. Shepherd (2014) highlights that ‘reducing transaction costs for exporters means that the overall wedge between the farm or factory gate price and the world price is reduced to some degree.’ As highlighted in the report, a number of factors affect farm and factory gate prices, and changes in transaction costs may not immediately translate into increased prices. Poor groups that may benefit includes those involved in the production of exportable goods such as cash crops like cocoa, coffee or cotton. Other...

The first Electronic Single Window (eSW) was introduced in Singapore in the late 1980’s. The Singapore TradeNet links multiple parties involved in external trade, including 34 government agencies, to a single point of transaction for most trade related transaction such as Customs clearance and payment of duties and taxes, processing of export and import permits and certificates of origin and collecting trade statistics. Between 1989 and the maturation of the system in the early 2000’s the major achievements included: Processing time was reduced from 2-7 days to within 2 minutes. Number of documents required fell from 3,035 (depending on the transactions) to 1. During this period the number of daily transactions processed rose from 10,000 per day to 30,000 per day. Freight forwarders estimate that they save 20-35 per cent of the cost of handling trade documentation. Payments of customs duties enter government coffers much faster than before. The compilation of trade statistics is substantially improved, benefiting the trading community as well as national authorities responsible for trade policy and economic surveillance. Since the launch of the Singapore TradeNet, over seventy countries have established eSWs of varying complexities, including over half a dozen or so in Africa, including the Rwanda eSW launched in 2012.24 This case study provides a brief overview of two different business models for implementation of the eSW and examines key pros and cons of the two models to inform TMA and policymakers in the region who may be considering establishing eSWs.  This is particularly relevant given...

Establishing a Formal Trade Portal A Trade Portal is a web-based trade facilitation tool that provides reliable and up to date information on all laws, regulations and procedures for traders and government agencies involved in the import and export of goods. The tool complements the overall goal of the electronic single window since it reduces the time and costs of obtaining information whilst offering greater transparency and predictability to trade transactions (World Bank, 2014). The Trade Portal is often considered a ‘first step’ towards the implementation of an eSW and increasingly seen as a way of promoting greater trade facilitation. (Pugliatti,2014). For WTO members, a Trade Portal assists them in complying with the new Trade Facilitation Agreement commitments related to Article 1 on publication and availability of information. The main obligations under this article is that Member States are required to publish ‘promptly’ a wide range of specific information related to requirements and procedure of clearing goods for import and export. In addition, Member States are required to publish this information on the internet (ITC, 2013). Despite the benefits of a Trade Portal, the development of this intervention can be extremely challenging for developing countries. Pugliatti (2014) provides a practical guideline for the steps required to develop a Trade Portal. The first step is to define the scope of the Portal in terms of the information that will be published, identifying key agencies that play a role in trade and what information they oversee as well as setting up a...

At the launch of the Kenyan Electronic Single Window in May 2014, President Uhuru called for the establishment of an EAC regional single window platform to integrate the national single window systems in partner states. Discussions on this initiative are ongoing as part of the EAC SCT operationalization, but currently only Kenya and Rwanda have functioning national level eSWs, though progress is made in establishing eSW in the other EAC member states. In late 2014, Tanzania contracted the delivery of the eSW to a private contractor, with initial roll-out for the Port of Mombasa with other border crossing and airports to be connected in the second phase. TMA is supporting the development of the eSW in Uganda, with an agreement signed for support from the Government of Denmark in September 2014. In March 2015, Burundi launched its own eSW with a number of key agencies already connected. The regional approach to eSW has been pioneered by the launch of the ASEAN Single Window Project (ASW) in 2013. The ASW is a regional initiative that connects and integrates national level eSWs of Member States. ASW implementation is expected to ensure compatibility of Member States eSWs with international open communication standards while also ensuring that each of those Member States can then exchange data securely and reliably with any trading partners that use international open standards. The ASW at present is rather limited in scope and connects only the Customs agencies of some ASEAN member countries. It currently supports the exchange of...

Section 5.2 of the report provided a detailed analysis of the average release times of imports and exports for the 2010-2014 period. In addition, it identified the release times for the various stages; some of these changes can be attributed to the ReSW, others are the result of other reform measures identified in the report. These data highlight progress as well as outstanding issues that can guide RRA in further streamlining its operations and extracting more benefits from the ReSW platforms o as to further better serve the trading community by reducing these times. These finding provide more information that has so far been used to monitor the progress of the ReSW and can be updated regularly with minor effort. In addition, the table below provides information on standard deviations for the overall time release estimate and for the different stage for the period 2010-2014. This is the first time that this statistic has been calculated for Rwanda release time and is rarely computed in time release studies. It contains valuable information and can assist in focusing on problem areas in the release process. The standard deviation statistics reflect how representative the calculated averages are for the population of release times of the data set. It informs us that 78.2 per cent of all observations fall within one standard deviation. For instance if the average time it takes between acceptance and release is 483 minutes and the standard deviation is 1118 minutes (Q4, 2014) it means that in the frequency...