A PORT COMMUNITY SINGLE WINDOW WILL ELECTRONICALLY HARMONIZE INFORMATION ON IMPORTS, EXPORTS.

The Government of Saint Lucia is seeking to simplify the administrative processes and procedures for goods entering and leaving the country.

In a thrust to improve Saint Lucia’s “Ease of Doing Business” ranking, the government has focused on trade facilitation of domestic and commercial goods. In 2009, Cabinet gave permission for the establishment of a Port Community Single Window to increase Saint Lucia’s competitiveness with regard to the trading of goods. The Port Community Single Window will electronically harmonize and standardize information relating to the clearing of goods.

Trade Facilitation Officer, Suzette Lewis-Jean, explained how this system will significantly improve the ease of doing business in Saint Lucia.

“This will make trading easier,” Mrs. Jean said. “If we would like to be competitive on the global market we really have to make trading within our borders a lot easier for investors. So for example you have customs with the ASYCUDA system, SLASPA has its own and there are a lot of others like truckers and shippers with their own systems. We are hoping to get all the agencies together under a single umbrella or a single window as we will call it, so when a trader uploads his manifest he does it once, and there would be no reason to go to Customs and back to SLASPA, and then all the different agencies. You only upload once, and it goes through the system until a decision has been made on your input.”

Mrs. Jean stated that the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Facilitation agreement makes it mandatory for all its members to establish a single window. Developing countries like Saint Lucia stand to benefit from this trade facilitation agreement.

“The Port Community Single Window will help us become more attractive to investors and make it easier for those trading within our borders,” she said.

Sabin Bajazet is the Communication and External Affairs manager for Seba in Guadeloupe. Seba is a private company charged with managing the Port Community Single Window in Guadeloupe for the past 15 years. She said the port single window facilitates all the logistics and trade facilitation processes in a completely paperless system.

“This is how we do business, and how we are able to declare our goods, so this process will actually be optimized through the system,” she said. Ms. Bajazet noted that the value Saint Lucia will receive from implementing such as system far out weights the initial setup cost.

Jamaica and Guadeloupe have already established the Port Community Single Window within their territories. The implementation of the Port Community Single Window is considered a priority on the Ease of Doing Business agenda for Saint Lucia.