Case Study: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) achieves rapid, paperless cargo clearance and lower trade costs with Axway B2Bi

How the electronic exchange of border documents puts ASEAN trade into high gear

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional bloc of 10 countries, needed to replace a slow, paper-based cross-border documentation system that caused repeated data entry, errors, high costs and lengthy cargo delays across disparate national customs processes. The challenge was to enable swift, secure and accurate electronic exchange of hundreds of document types to streamline trade and accelerate regional economic integration.

Using Axway B2Bi to build the ASEAN Single Window (ASW), ASEAN deployed secure gateways connecting each National Single Window and a regional hub; a successful pilot led to full production in 2016. Today five Member States exchange live data, more than 130,000 Certificates of Origin have been transmitted electronically, Indonesia has halved cargo release times for ASEAN-origin shipments, and the program is cutting costs, reducing errors and speeding time to market as remaining members and additional documents are brought on board.

ASEAN

Muwasiq Noor

Deputy of Operation and Development