Reply To: What effect does the UK’s Electronics Trade Documents bill have on trade around

[Eddie Philips]

With this bill, it will be easier, cheaper, faster, and safer for businesses to trade with other countries right away. The main good benefits about the Bill are:

1. Increasing efficiency and lowering costs of trade administration because processing electronic documents is faster and cheaper than paper ones,

2. Making trade safer and more legal by taking advantage of the transparency and traceability of electronic documents.

3. Getting environmental benefits from less paper use and fewer emissions from couriers.

Putting these benefits into numbers, the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) says that if 50% of the container shipping industry switched to electronic bills of lading, the world would save around £3 billion. Most people who took part in a Law Commission survey said they thought transaction costs would go down by at least 5%. According to CargoX, as reported by Trade Finance Global, it can take seven to ten days to transfer a paper trade document, but processing the document electronically can reduce this time down to as little as 20 seconds. When it comes to the environment, the World Economic Forum thinks that this could cut global carbon emissions from logistics by as much as 10 to 12 percent.