Funding Export Research

The second area worth looking into is that of trade facilitation where, compared to places like the United Kingdom, Australia falls well short. When I speak of trade facilitation, I’m not talking about marketing or the work Austrade does, I’m talking about managing the export process and all the elements that make up that process.

While Australia has done much to improve especially customs procedures, there is no overall trade facilitation program. As the world increases globalisation and concerns continue over supply chain security, trade facilitation will become increasingly important.

One field of trade facilitation that we can all relate to is documentation. While much information associated with an export consignment is electronic—EDNs, online permits, EXDOCs and so forth—there are others where faxes or PDFs or scanned images to an email remain the fundamental way of doing business.

Given the cost, poor productivity and the fact that many of our trading partners are moving rapidly towards paperless systems, this is clearly not good enough.

One of the problems is that the issue is not confined to just one government department; it goes across a whole range of departments. Despite that, I see no reason why the Government can’t take a holistic approach to trade facilitation and work with one body to bring it all together. In both cases, the payback would be substantial.

—Ian Murray is executive director of the Australia Institute of Export