Customs buy-in adds impetus to airfreight’s paperless chase

The airfreight industry’s paperless march has gained momentum following a decision by the World Customs Organisation to work towards reducing paperbased documentation that accompanies international air cargo shipments. And the move has been welcomed by The International Air Cargo Association as a ‘significant step forward’. The WCO will begin by undertaking a survey within the WCO member administrations and partner organisations to list the top priority documents to be dematerialised. It will also discuss measures to promote digital signatures as a means to maintain authenticity and integrity of documents. Discussions on the end-to-end management of electronic documents with other international organisations will be initiated and work will begin on a WCO Recommendation based on the proposed Guidelines on Supporting Documents. Tiaca secretary general, Daniel Fernandez, said the WCO’s commitment was a constructive response to a long-standing and substantial business difficulty. “We work in a world where international air consignments, managed by global traders through finetuned automated business technologies and moving on modern aircraft controlled and tracked by state of the art communication systems are still subject to completely anachronistic paper-based checks on millions of import transactions annually.” One global express operator has calculated that two all-cargo 747s would be needed to move all paper demanded every year of his own company. “The overall cost is not just funding this unnecessary carbon footprint but the extra and incalculable cumulative cost of all the delays inherent in preparing, presenting and processing these pieces of paper in a predominantly electronic business and administrative environment,” said Fernandez. Tiaca has been highlighting this costly anomaly for many years and has made its abolition a major facilitation objective. It has called on governments and relevant international institutions to eliminate any but the most essential documents and turn the remainder into internationally standard electronic messages. “Clearly this process will take some time but the WCO’s acceptance of the need for reform is extremely welcome and can be supported by the increased paperless trading and automation solutions being implemented by the air cargo industry through initiatives such as Iata e-freight and Cargo 2000,” he said.