The Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation (the Alliance) has published its Annual Report 2018 highlighting the impact of its work just three years after its inception.

The Alliance brings together governments and businesses to help implement the WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement. It is now delivering nine projects across Africa, Asia and Latin America, scoping two further projects and considering nine others.

This latest report includes the Alliance’s first interim project results from Colombia where businesses and the National Food and Drug Surveillance Institute (INVIMA) are witnessing a marked improvement in border efficiency thanks to a new risk-management system. Between the system's introduction in March 2018 and February 2019 INVIMA recorded a 27% reduction in physical inspections of food products at Colombia's borders, equating to over 16,000 less inspections and reducing the processing time for low risk food products from up to a day to just one to two hours.

The report also includes testimonials directly from project partners across the Alliance’s portfolio of projects which indicate a break-through in the way that governments and businesses work together to deliver change. Perhaps most noteworthy, the Alliance is creating a new role for business in the reform process, using its skills and expertise to their full potential. To date, the Alliance has leveraged USD 3.88M of in-kind contributions to its work from the private sector.

Read the full report.