Asia Pacific Trade Facilitation Forum 2012 in Colombo

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce will co-host the Asia Pacific Trade Facilitation Forum 2012 (APTFF) in Colombo with United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The event will be held on October 30 & 31 2012 at Hotel Galadari.

In addition to the forum, an exhibition, a number of side events and capacity building programmes on the subject will be held during the week starting from October 29, 2012 ending on November 2 ,2012.

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce is working closely with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Ministry of External Affairs and Sri Lanka Customs in organizing the forum.

The Asia Pacific Trade Facilitation Forum (APTFF), launched jointly by UNESCAP and the ADB in 2009, is an annual open regional event to exchange information, experiences and practices for trade facilitation in Asia-Pacific, indentify priority areas for regional cooperation and integration and learn about new tools and services which can increase the efficiency of cross-border transactions that will ultimately improve the competitiveness of firms in the region.

The forum was held in Bangkok, Thailand in 2009, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2010 and in Seoul, Republic of Korea in 2011. Sri Lanka will be the first South Asian country to host this prestigious event. APTFF will bring 200 senior public and private sector officials from Asia Pacific countries to Colombo. Experts on the subject from all over the world will gather in Colombo to share their experiences and demonstrate new tools and services in the area of trade facilitation.

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce believes that this would be an ideal forum to showcase Sri Lanka's potential of becoming an aviation, naval and a commercial hub in Asia. Further hosting a prominent international event of this magnitude will help promote Sri Lanka tourism as well as help build the image of the country as the Wonder of Asia in the eyes of the world.

Hosting APTFF in Sri Lanka in 2012 is also important from a regional perspective. South Asia is a region that has many benefits to reap through improved trade facilitation. This region still remains one of the world's least integrated regions in the world.

Intra-regional trade has been stagnating around 4-5 % for the past decade. Studies have revealed that that the South Asian region's expansion of trade can be substantially advanced with programmes of concrete action to address barriers to trade facilitation to advance regional goals. APTFF will provide a forum to create interest and publicity to issues related to trade facilitation in South Asia and highlight benefits other regions and countries have achieved through improved trade facilitation.

It will bring together the key decision makers in South Asia responsible for trade facilitation and provide them an opportunity to share their ideas and views and find ways to cooperate to improve trade facilitation among countries in the region. It will provide a forum for South Asian countries to share their experiences in trade facilitation as well as learn from best practices of other countries.