By Lavern Clarke. Staff ReporterJAMAICA'S PROGRESS towards e-Government services has been slow, but on Wednesday the state-run investment promotion agency, Jampro, announced progress with its online trade facilitation site, jamaicatradepoint.com, a four year old project.
Under a public/private sector agreement, Trade Point now links the Shipping Association of Jamaica's e-manifest service, the Trade Board's import licensing and export certification services, the Customs Department's processing of import and export forms, and Jampro's exporter registration service.
Through the website, aspects of which remain under construction, companies will have real time access and will be able to transact business with the agencies from one point of contact on a 24-hour basis, assisted by an 'e-payment' facility offered through the site.
Jampro President, Pat Francis, speaking with the Financial Gleaner, said while there is no immediate data on what companies will save in dollar terms by utilising the portal to do business, the time and manpower savings are sure, especially for port services.
Tradepoint.com is expected to cut the turnaround time for the processing of shipments, and in the initial run, with respect to Customs' 16 largest clients who represent a major part of inbound cargo, the processing time is to be reduced from three-four days to half an hour; and more generally, to cut down the hours waiting in line to do business with the various agencies to a matter of minutes before a computer terminal, she said.
"We have benchmarked this project against Singapore, which has the most competitive port in the world," said Francis. "The turnaround time for ships is something like two hours because of their e-compatibility."
STRATEGIC EDGE
Jamaica, she said, is now the only port in the Caribbean with this facility, giving Kingston a strategic edge in its push to become the most competitive in the region.
"Immediately we are in another class - the shipping industry can now use Trade Point as a tool to market the port of Jamaica," said the Jampro president. She adds that another side benefit is greater transparency in the conduct of business, and less chances for corrupt practices to thrive as transactions can now be monitored.
Countries like Jamaica have to be showing tangible results in rooting out corruption or face sanctions in the forms of reduced access to development assistance, or aid, from the United States, and other world powers.
A Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Ministries of Commerce, Finance and Development, the SAJ, and Port Authority of Jamaica, commits the parties to providing information required for the trade site to function effectively, joint marketing, and to participate in the financing of Trade Point initiatives and publicity programmes.
The MOU, which was signed at Jamaica House Wednesday, also commits the Ministries to supporting the virtual trade agency, notwithstanding any future changes in ministerial portfolio. Fiscal Services, another partner in the project, will host the site.
Francis, while enthused about the possibilities, noted that there was a drawback - the trade data available to overseas investors has a serious lag time of one year.
Through Trade Point, which is benchmarked on the international project first promulgated by UNCTAD in 1992 as a means of improving business and trade between countries, Jamaican companies have access to market information on 170 countries linked to the international portal. Reciprocally, Jamaica's information is available to those 170 nations, said Francis, speaking in an interview following the signing of the MOU.
She adds however, that the Jamaican portal has a missing link, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, the agency that collects and publishes trade data, whose system is not compatible with Trade Point.
Plans are underway that will allow the systems to integrate, said Francis, under an Inter-American Development Bank-financed programme, which will be announced officially next week.
"We are hoping when that happens that STATIN will become ready to receive the information. Right now STATIN's system can't read all of the information that we are putting on Trade Point so there is going to be a little time lag before we are absolutely perfected."
The programme, which also falls under the e-Government thrust, is designed to bring most revenue-generating Government agencies to the point of offering their services on-line.
Trade Point is to be overseen by an advisory committee, which will also be the point of interface with the World Trade Point Federation.
Port Authority, SAJ, Customs and Jampro are collaborating on a study to track the impact of Trade Point on the cost of doing business, said Francis.
