Union Minister of Finance, Defence and Corporate Affairs, Arun Jaitley has released the National Trade Facilitation Action Plan (NTFAP) on July 20, 2017. After releasing this National Action Plan, he said that the entry into force of the WTO-Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) on February 22, 2017 is a major milestone for the global trading system. He also said that India looks forward to ensuring compliance with the TFA and also impetus to trade facilitation.
The minister has said that the NTFAP gives a time bound map, not only for implementing TFA, but also for the country’s initiatives for trade facilitation and ease of doing business which goes beyond TFA. Adding further, he said that the aim of the action plan is to transform cross border clearance ecosystem through efficient, transparent, risk based, coordinated, digital, seamless and technology driven procedures which are supported by state-of-the-art sea ports, airports and land borders.
Jaitley further stated that the objectives to be achieved by National Action Plan are improvement in ease of doing business by reduction in cargo release time and cost, move towards paperless regulatory environment, transparent and predictable legal regime and improved investment climate through better infrastructure. He also noted that the action plan lists out specific activities which would be carried out by all regulatory agencies like Customs, FSSAI, Drug Controller, Plant Quarantine, DGFT etc in time bound manner. He added that this co-ordination among all the stakeholders is needed to achieve the objective of trade facilitation.