By Ekaterina Prodanova | SRS2021

On 11th academic week Silk Road School organized one more insightful seminar for the first year Master’s Program students, the third one in this year series. On November 25 professor Jiangyuan Fu, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and an alumna of Renmin University of China shared with first year SRS masters students her recent research output on Trade Facilitation in Times of Crisis and Pandemic. As an alumna and a senior to the students, Professor Fu created a presentation atmosphere of sharing her experience with juniors rather than simply a giving a lecture.

Professor Fu started off the presentations with a brilliant illustration of trade cost variations which won attention from the audience immediately. After a brief introduction she demonstrated the difference in the price of giant brown crab in Ireland (2 euro, an equivalent of 15 RMB) and in China (538 RMB). The discussion of factors involved in creating such a price gap started immediately afterwards with the students eagerly offering their suggestions.

The main part of the presentation was well-structured and introduced such an important trade cost formation factor as the global supply chains. Professor Fu seamlessly connected this information to the importance of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) which was the main subject of her research. After elaborating on the background and the history of TFA, she explained the structure and the functioning of the Agreement system. Speaking about the fundamental aspects of the TFA, Professor Fu described the Trade Facilitation Provisions, Special and Differential Treatment of the member countries and the institutional arrangement. The keywords were transparency and appeal, freedom of transit and customs cooperation.

Students found the seminar discussion topic highly applicable to the current situation.Here are some comments by student participants:

Wenxuan Liu from Malaysia shared: “This lecture introduces the importance of TFA paperless customs declaration under the epidemic, especially if we are engaged in international trade in the future, it is necessary to pay attention to the customs clearance system. The main conditions for trade facilitation are electronic and digital measures, but the development of cross-border paperless facilitation is different in each country. Therefore, in the future, the international community may focus on using legally effective agreements and action plans to promote the facilitation of cross-border paperless trade in various countries, and provide specialized technical assistance and capacity building to help more countries implement paperless trade, which can help the Asia-Pacific Progress in regional trade”.

The source of the data Professor Fu demonstrated during the presentation lies in her biennial research results which were insightful. The statistical numbers provided us with a big picture on the current stage of implementation of the TFA in the whole Agreement zone. Moreover, Professor Fu intrigued the audience by including an extra slide in her presentation with selected information on the countries of the seminar participants, and such attention to details was much appreciated.

Many of the seminar participants have background in business and economics, among them, Howard Co from the Philippines pointed out:

“Trade Facilitation is very important for a developing country like the Philippines and has significant influence on its domestic economy. The Philippines is an importing nation in as such the majority of its consumption relies on imports. Ideally we would like to keep the cost of trade facilitation at a minimum, but the government also realizes that import tax and trade tax is a significant revenue channel. Hence there are plenty of leakages and illegal smuggling of goods. A unified and transparent TF process can help speed up transaction as well as properly document transactions for imported goods”.

The Q&A session focused mainly on the topic of the common concern, which isthe current vaccine distribution problems, as they are highly related to the global supply chains, logistics and customs clearance. Professor Fu gave down to the point answers to the questions raised by the participants from Nigeria, Iran and Costa Rica.

Overall, Natalia Kowalska from Poland provides a wholesome comment on the seminar:“The seminar on Trade facilitating was very informative and helped me understand various processes that I previously had no or very limited knowledge about. I was very glad to learn about global value chains, and because of that to be able to understand in depth all the processes regarding this topic. Trade facilitation in times of crisis and pandemic was another amazing point that was well explained and helped me to clearly see the current situation in the world. I think this seminar was a great initiative, because it showed us the present circumstances and helped understand important topics that will be more than useful in the future”.

Edited by : Aneka Rebecca Rajbhandari | SRS2021