Central America continues to undertake various efforts to remain united. head of the Secretariat for Economic Integration of Central America (SIECA), Francisco Lima Mena, He highlighted the future of the Central American Digital Trade Platform (PDCC), a project that seeks integration and provides a technological infrastructure for trade facilitation.
“The PDCC is a significant step that Central America is taking in relation to the digitalization of the intraregional trade exchange procedures, which will translate into multiple benefits,” said the SIECA secretary in a statement released this Monday (12.09.2022/XNUMX/XNUMX) on the YouTube channel.
The importance of the platform is the systems interoperability between government institutions, the improvement and optimization of procedures associated with the trade of six member countries of the Central American Integration System: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.
“It brings together 71 services necessary for different ranges of export and import activities," said the SIECA representative.
The new technology, supported directly by the European Union cooperation, will also ensure fluidity between the national customs computer systems of the countries involved. By allowing the electronic submission of documents In the exchange of goods in the region, through the “advance declaration” in its DUCA F and DUCA D modality, it will reduce waiting times at customs and optimize regional import, export and transit processes.
“Time savings will go from hours to minutes,” said the head of SIECA, and emphasized that this will have a positive impact on consumers since “companies usually spend between 10% and 12% of the cost of products.” Aware of the need to make progress on this issue, he said that Central America requires improvements in road infrastructure and border equipment.
Lima Mena continued with the aspects related to the technological modernization of the health, immigration and customs processes in the region. He indicated that the PDCC also will allow electronic exchange of information and provide real time statistics. In this way, the tool will improve control and inter-institutional coordination, through advance information. In the words of SIECA, this is “invaluable” since it is “a guide for trade policy makers to make better decisions.”
The development of the PDCC began in 2015 and is 90% complete. SIECA expects this “one-of-a-kind product” to be operational “sometime in 2022.”
Thus, the Digital Platform linked to integration will facilitate trade, reduce costs and increase the competitiveness of countries in Central America.The future we expect with the Central American Digital Trade Platform, episode 10 of SIECA)
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