Context
In the United Nation’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific's (UNESCAP), Global Survey on Digital and Sustainable Trade Facilitation, India has scored 90.32%. It is a remarkable jump from 78.49% in 2019.
About the Survey
- Global Survey on Digital and Sustainable Trade Facilitation is conducted every two years by UNESCAP.
- The 2021 Survey includes an assessment of 58 trade facilitation measures that are covered by the WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement.
- The Survey showsevidence that whether or not the trade facilitation measures have the desired impact and helps draw comparison amongst the countries.
- A higher score for a country also helps businesses in their investment decisions.
- The survey evaluated 143 economies.
What are the key findings concerning India?
- The survey highlighted India's significant improvement in the scores on all 5 key indicators.
- The key indicators include Transparency, Formalities, Institutional Arrangement and Cooperation, Paperless Trade, andCross-Border Paperless Trade.
- India is the best-performing country in comparison to the South and South-West Asia region (63.12%) and the Asia Pacific region (65.85%).
- The overall score of India is found to be greater than many OECD countries including France, UK, Canada, Norway, Finland, etc.
- The overall score is greater than the average score of the EU.
- India achieved a 100% score for the Transparency index and 66% in the “Women in trade” component.
Reasons behind the good performance
- CBIC has been at forefront of path-breaking reforms under the umbrella of 'Turant' Customs to usher in a Faceless, Paperless and Contactless Customs by way of a series of reforms.
Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC)
- It is a part of the Department of Revenue under the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
Functions
- It deals with the tasks of formulation of policy which concerns levy and collection of Customs, Central Excise duties, Central Goods & Services Tax and IGST.
- It acts for the prevention of smuggling and administration of matters that relates to the Customs, Central Excise, Central Goods & Services Tax, IGST, and Narcotics to the extent under CBIC's purview.
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- A dedicated single window COVID-19 24*7 helpdesks for the EXIM trade was also created on the CBIC website to facilitate quick resolution of issue(s) which were faced by the importers.
About Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
- The ESCAP serves as the United Nations’ regional hub which promotes cooperation among the countries to achieve inclusive and sustainable development.
- It is the largest regional intergovernmental platform with 53 Member States and 9 associate members.
- ESCAP has emerged as a strong regional think-tank that offers countries sound analytical products to shed insight into the evolving economic, social and environmental dynamics of the region.
- The Commission’s strategic focus is basically to deliver on the 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development, which is reinforced and deepened by promotion of the regional cooperation and integration to advance responses to shared vulnerabilities, connectivity, financial cooperation and market integration.
- ESCAP’s research and analysis is coupled with its policy advisory services, capacity building and technical assistance to the governments, that aims to support countries’ sustainable and inclusive development ambitions.
- ESCAP pursues the objective by carrying out work in the following areas:
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