The International Federation of Freight Forwarders’ Associations (Fiata) was reinventing itself to meet the challenges of the future head on, said its president Babar Badat in Cape Town yesterday.
Speaking on the eve of the annual Fiata conference taking place in South Africa this year, Badat said the organisation had embarked on a programme of change to ensure Fiata remained sustainable in the future.
“This requires a reset in Fiata,” he said. “If we want to beat the challenges of the new era then we must be prepared.”
Badat said this included an upgrade of Fiata’s secretariat as well as an increase in staff to expand the organisation to allow for increased advocacy in the transport and logistics industry.
“We are also moving the headquarters from Zurich in Switzerland to Geneva as this is an international centre that will allow us more access to more multilateral companies.”
Also on the cards, said Badat, was a merger of Fiata’s vocational training institute and its training advisory board.
“The goal of this reset is to make Fiata a more robust organisation that is more in tune with the times.”
According to Badat, one of the major priorities at this year’s conference would be encouraging more young people into the transport and logistics industry. He said a working group would be launched to address this challenge, while embracing technology and the change it was bringing to logistics would also be under discussion at the conference. – Liesl Venter
