COVID-19 Trade Facilitation Repository

Assessing the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global businesses (insights to be captured in SME Competitiveness Report 2020 on Covid-19 impact)

Temporary trade measures enacted by government authorities in relation to COVID-19 pandemic

Contains trusted advice for businesses, governments and chambers of commerce on COVID-19 response.

The Alliance webpage houses all the latest resources on COVID-19 and trade facilitation.

This platform creates a space to connect stakeholders to projects, such as the project on COVID-19 impact on manufacturing and supply chains and the project on pandemic supply chains.

News, Analysis and Resources. UNCTAD is monitoring the effects of the global pandemic on manufacturing, trade, foreign direct investment and economic growth.

There is a need to keep ships moving, ports open and crossborder trade flowing, while ensuring that border agencies can safely undertake all necessary controls.
Facilitating trade and the transport of goods has become more important than ever, to avoid logistics obstacles that lead to shortages of necessary supplies.
The concrete measures proposed in this policy brief help to facilitate transport and trade and to protect the population from COVID-19.

Online course Empowerment Programme for NTFCs: UNCTAD provides an intensive professional program for the Secretariat and the members of National Trade Facilitation Committees (NTFCs) in English, French, Spanish (to be launched) and Portuguese consisting of 9 courses. The main objective is to help them implement, in a coordinated manner, trade facilitation reforms, including the provisions of the Agreement on Trade Facilitation of the World Trade Organization.

The is often a lack of transparency in connection with the introduction of emergency measures relating to trade and transport. This leads to disruption of international trade and supply chains. In close collaboration with the stakeholders of the National Trade Facilitation Committee, UNCTAD offers to undertake desk based rapid scans of the framework of national emergency regulations and with the relevant stakeholders develop a strategy to publish such information in the most transparent manner. In countries that have national trade portals, such information would naturally feature on these portals under a special section of the web site.

Transit is per definition a multi-country operation, which involves multiple procedures in every country of the transit operation, which leads to complexity. The WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement suggests that each country appoints a national transit coordinator to liaise with other countries to facilitate movement under transit and to collaborate to address transit challenges. UNCTAD provides a one-week regional training course for transit coordinators focusing on concrete collaboration mechanisms that are particularly important in times of crisis such as COVID-19, with view to coordinating interventions and trade restrictions between regional trading partners.