n Pakistan, as in many other countries, economic expansion is a prerequisite for political and social stability.

Many of the obstacles and opportunities in the path of expansion are political and need to be handled by political intervention. Such features include market access, and preferential tariffs and rules of origin. They are negotiated in the WTO, in or with such regional group as the EEU, APEC or ASEAN or through bilateral trade agreements.

Here success depends less on justice or need than on the ability to deploy influence and exercise pressure. Pakistan, placed by a variety of geo-political circumstances outside the main regional groupings, has serious disadvantages.

There are other obstacles at the level of official and commercial operations, however, that have a very powerful effect on external trade performance and national income and revenue. They subject the individual international trade transaction to a wide range of diverse but cumulatively very powerful constraints, on-costs and competitive handicaps.

Here political influence is almost irrelevant. Success, on a scale of the utmost significance for Pakistan, can be attained by well-managed day-to-day trading in the large and lucrative sector of the global market place already open to competition.

The most successful trading nations, or so-called developed economies, have gone far to reduce or eliminate many of the regulatory and other frictional factors that still inhibit and restrict their global supply, production and delivery systems, but they are also assuming and imposing a number of new, potentially very damaging requirements to meet acute concerns for national security.

These could cast further very serious burdens on all the external trade efforts of many developing countries, especially those that, like Pakistan, have a major interest in the massive US market.
 

The Pakistan Competitiveness Project (PCP) has been designed to promote and develop external trade by mobilising the support, expertise and practical effort of relevant public and commercial interests to identify early, attainable, improvement in practical operations at key points along the line of the typical international trade transaction

Previous facilitation programmes and projects, stretching back some fifteen years, commencing with facilitation components in a World Bank loan for Karachi Port development and succeeded by UNCTAD studies of multimodal transport priorities, have followed a conventional pattern of external audit and analysis, followed by proposals for remedial action.

This formula left open the whole question of ownership and reduced stakeholders to at best participants in a pre-decided strategy and, at the worst, passive subjects for examination and adaptation.

The new Pakistan Competitiveness Project aims to produce a set of analyses and reforms clearly marked "Made in Pakistan" so that, from the earliest stages, Pakistani institutions and persons associated with and responsible for relevant work programmes will know they are developing solutions based on their own assessments and experience and drawing from external sources only such information, advice and technical assistance as may not be available to them in Pakistan.

Every effort should be made to mobilise and assemble existing competent trade and official organisations institutions, extending their traditional interests within carefully balanced co-operative programmes rather than engaging in unnecessary institution building. This national support should be extended by consultation and co-operation, from the outset of practical work, with the many inter-governmental and international trade organisations that are now fully cognisant of the need for global trade efficiencies and their responsibilities to ensure that developing economies are afforded essential aid in capacity building and associated technical assistance.

Such efforts will need the most careful adjustment to proven needs and identified valid objectives if they are not to prove just another international self-deception. All the material coming from the reports and other component products that can be expected from this project can be of the greatest assistance in providing such signposts to international attention and co-operation in the WTO and other influential agencies.

The global war on terrorism, declared and led by the United States, is being waged at many levels and on diverse economic and political battlefields. Goods in international movement are subjected to increasingly strict controls. Some of these fall with particularly damaging effect on such time-sensitive transport operations as integrated maritime container movements and global air cargo operations. They can give rise to many adverse effects in just-in-time supply, production and distribution systems affecting main-steam commercial activities by overseas companies with factories in Pakistan and also a much wider range of sub-contracting small and medium-sized industries, especially in the garment making, electronic component and sub-assembly industry.

The same dangers can spread into and threaten any emergent direct Pakistan exports of premium fruits and vegetables.

It seems very likely that, if and when "facilitation" surfaces once again as a practical possibility in WTO negotiations, discussion will be complicated by strong new security counter-currents. Pakistani delegates to WCO, IMO and ICAO meetings, covering facilitation issues are already encountering vigorous US-led security proposals for stricter controls and extra regulations.

Pakistan, placed, geographically, in a region presenting some of the most publicised and pressing terrorist risks, has, at the same time, succeeded in securing a very stable and constructive working economic and political relationship with the US and its supporters.

PCP would have a unique opportunity to illustrate the benefits and practical advantages of this politico-economic security bridge by developing and applying special arrangements for its trade with the US and others security-sensitive markets under a carefully designed and mutually agreed set of procedures and practices linking facilitation to security at the all-important operational level of day-to-day trading.

The proposed pragmatic application of facilitation principles to a realistic assessment of the situation in a developing economy may also make an important contribution to the brief for Pakistani representatives if and when facilitation re-enters the WTO agenda after recent unhelpful events in Cancun.

The Transaction
Any international transaction, in its most general sense, calls for certain actions and skills over and above domestic trading.

It is no part of the Project to urge or encourage anyone to cross this important divide in commercial activity and risk-taking. Any attempt to do so, in the absence of strong self-motivation and a full awareness, by the trader, of the inevitable extra demands on skills and resources will be ill-advised and may have disastrous commercial consequences.

Many international trade promotion campaigns and programmes set out to persuade small and medium sized enterprises to extend, on their own account, from what may often be reasonably profitable and well-understood operations in the home market to brave the many new risks and requirements of global competition. This may prove an incitation to bankruptcy.

It can often be more prudent, if less immediately profitable, to enter overseas business through the commercial decompression chamber of association with, or sub-contracting to, an established multinational company. Such arrangements will open up a natural and usually well-focused flow of technical and commercial information and help the debutant trader plan his own independent marketing, delivery and payment systems.

In either event the trader’s ability to access, interpret, evaluate and manage information will be of primary importance in the eventual quality of all his international transactions. The PCP would respond to and reflects this principle.

A rough analysis of information in international trading will cover at least three factors

In many efforts at systematic export encouragement much play is made with electronic networks designed to circulate details of "trade opportunities."

Such systems, for example, the Industrial Information Network, established recently by Pakistan’s Small and Medium Enterprise Authority (SMEDA) in co-operation with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) or the Trade Point Network, can offer a core of useful information on public tenders where conditions of competition are open and there are genuine possibilities of profitable activity.

Others offer much less useful lists of commercial requirements or enquiries. Few serious buyers will want to confide their needs to third party distributors of miscellaneous business announcements. Classification presents great difficulties. If openings are grouped under convenient product sectors then, given the relative modest overall coverage of even the most ambitious examples, there will be many gaps and blank spaces. If classifications are too coarse-grained then a small trader, looking for his own special interests, could spend – or waste – much time in fruitless searches.

Broad experience of these systems, over the last twenty-five years suggests that many have simply extended the early computerisation slogan "rubbish in, rubbish out" to "rubbish round and round."

Familiarity with, and judicious, well-informed use of, the Internet and associated specialist websites will be a primary element. The component product would be the specified materials and a report with recommendations for organising an on-going monitoring and up-dating service.

This task should be notified to and discussed with the WTO/UNCTAD International Trade Centre (ITC) as a tangible example of a possible precedent for a useful extension of their current range of course subjects.

There are additional potential synergies with current e-learning developments in the World Bank Global Facilitation Partnership (GFP), the World Customs Organisation (WCO) and the International Road Transport Union (IRU).
 

Once a trader identifies an opportunity he has to decide whether to seize it.

Some of the relevant information, for example the status and reliability of the prospective trading partner will have to be acquired, usually under conditions of some confidentiality, by normal commercial means.

There will also be a mass of "public" factual information, however, including freight rates and services, alternative modes and routes, exchange rates, and Customs and other official regulations, constraints and prohibitions. Such data are now freely and instantly available wherever a computer can be connected to the Internet.

Some such information will require researches behind and beyond bare facts on websites. The above measures should therefore include arrangements to identify and recruit support from those official and trade organisations, at national, regional and international level that are able and willing to supply such supplementary information.

The component product will be a report with recommendations for specific actions. It might be desirable and feasible to entrust this work to the same experts as those who might agree to serve on the Expert Group for Recommendation 1 or, at any rate, to encourage substantial cross-membership.

Here, as for Recommendation 1, co-operation with the ITC would be mutually beneficial.
 

This is a completely different dimension in information handling and might be more accurately described as data management.

It covers the generation, assembly, checking and communication/exchange of those items of information that are necessary to move the goods to their eventual destination, by the usual commercial and official procedures and obtain associated payment.

The trader may well have his own preferences for managing in-house information but after the goods leave his premises or before they arrive he has to comply with the data requirements and formats of many other interests, including, especially, such authoritative outsiders as Customs, security and dangerous goods controls, and banks and pre-shipment inspection agencies.

In-house information processing and necessary external communications and exchanges were customarily managed by manual processes, using paper documents. The pace and scope of the recent massive commercial and official shift to electronic interchanges between automated data processing systems have differed markedly between developed and developing countries and the resulting "digital divide" has very important and damaging implications for countries bringing up the rear of these fundamental changes in international trading practice.

Business and public agencies still making significant use of paper forms should, at the very least, apply and reap the benefit of the work on standard international trade documentation carried out by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and embodied in the Aligned Document System, based on the UN Layout Key.

This brings basic uniformity into information management by assuring users of international standards for relevant codes, defining all data elements generally used in international trade, stipulating and limiting the contents of essential documents, and fixing the position of specific items of information within a prescribed page layout.

Successful trading nations now take it for granted that operational information is exchanged, electronically, computer-to-computer, between shipper, forwarding agent, Customs, carriers and other participants in the trade transaction.

Agreed international standards and rules for data elements and message structures, known as UN/EDIFACT (UN Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport) and the newer, Internet-based, ebXML (Electronic Business Extensible Markup Language) now extend this documentary simplification and standardisation into automated data management and exchanges.

Familiarity with such standards and their effective use will give Pakistan access to a global highway for data management of the international trade transaction. Though much less glamorous than many public exhortations and incentives to compete in the global market-place, it can be a great deal more relevant to day-to-day success and profitability.

At the level of day-to-day small business operations simplicity and order in office record-keeping and inward and outward communication will free managers to concentrate on such substantive and profitable activities as production, marketing and delivery.

Recent innovations by such global software houses as Microsoft and Adobe demonstrate a growing, if tardy, recognition of the merits and potentialities of the UN Layout Key. They and some of their competitors are using it to design and market templates for invoices, purchase orders, freight bookings and other trade documents.

Given the opportunity to take full advantage of such developments, the Pakistan trader will be able to issue electronic Freight Forwarding Instructions, based on the FIATA approved model with the same ease as he can now use a pre-defined fax form to transmit a Word document.

The Central Board of Revenue and Pakistan Customs, supported by Pakistan Revenue Automation Ltd. (PRAL), the Customs Clearing Agents and UNCTAD, have just introduced a new Goods Declaration that can be prepared on a personal computer and submitted to Customs on a diskette, a USB hard –drive or through the Internet.

Unfortunately for traders and agents it still necessary to bring the signed paper Declaration to Custom House or even more time consuming—deliver it to Port Qasim.

Computerisation of the Goods Declaration, with suitable arrangements for electronic signature equivalents, should not only bring early elimination of this requirement for a supplementary paper document but also open the way for relevant data to be transferred, electronically, from PRAL to the State Bank of Pakistan, bringing additional simplification by eliminating the need for Form E to cover foreign exchange repatriation.

It is important to note that the standards set of data elements, identified by and agreed upon, between the G7 and EU Commission, have now been transferred for future management and promotion to the WCO.

It has been natural for countries with special concerns for security to base their intensified border controls on computerised risk-assessment systems using data elements from what is now the WCO Data Model.

Pakistan, therefore, will derive significant benefits from familiarity with and use of such standard data in all trade transactions with the USA and other countries with stringent security controls.

A small expert group should complete the work initiated by the current trade facilitation project and:

It will be useful to enlist the interest and support of commercial concerns marketing copying machines/systems and software designed to produce standard paper documents from small office computers.

The component product would be a report on progress towards the maximum practicable exploitation of the UN Aligned Document system. This should be furnished to the UN Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT), generally seen as having global responsibility for the promotion and support for documentary alignment, for their comment and suggestions for any necessary additional action.

One of the reasons why Pakistan and some other countries the Asia region are not as familiar with many of the UN-ISO standards is that most of the relevant meetings are held in Geneva. A regional association – the Asian Pacific Council for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (AFACT) has tried, for some years to replicate the Geneva discussions nearer home.

A small expert group from relevant government agencies and commercial organisations should:

The component product would be a report with recommendations for specific actions. This should be forwarded to UN/CEFACT, for information, and with a request for comment and suggestions for ways in which that organisation could assist Pakistan in the early computerisation of all main transactional procedures.

A copy of the report should also be sent to the WCO, through Pakistan, Customs, for comment and any suggestions for assisting this process in Customs practice.
 

It would be completely unrealistic for the Project, with its limited time-scale, to attempt to deal with general export difficulties and opportunities.

It would, however, be equally irresponsible to overlook two special problems that are bound to constrain trade with the USA, by far Pakistan’s largest export market – new security requirements and the resurgence of illicit drug production in next-door Afghanistan.

If they are left to develop "normally" these factors will bring import restrictions, complications and on-costs, far outweighing any facilitation that might be achieved by other Project elements.

A possible alternative would be an early positive approach to bring Pakistani exports into constructive compliance with key USA security arrangements. Three of these are particularly relevant – the Customs-Trade Partnership for Anti-Terrorism (C-TPAT), the Container Security Initiative (CSI) and the Business Anti-Smuggling Coalition. (BASC).

C-TPAT is a voluntary set of undertakings, so far limited to US companies, setting specific standards for security in physical premises, staff recruitment and computer systems. While agreement to C-TPAT carries no defined facilitation advantages it is understood that non-membership could result in delays to consignments while specific security checks are applied.

CSI is a system under which certain ports agree to observe heightened security practices when handling containerised cargo destined for the USA. Here there is an evident commercial incentive, given that shippers may be reluctant to send containers to the USA through non-CSI ports because these shipments could be subject to additional controls at or before importation.

BASC originated some ten years ago from an initiative by Mattel, a leading US toy and doll manufacturer, with important production units in Mexico, who had special marketing and public relations reasons to avoid any suspicion that their products, destined for children, might have any connection with illicit drug movements across the Mexico/US border.

They approached US Customs and negotiated a set of anti-drug security measures in respect of their own operations, making employment of carriers and other intermediaries conditional on their observance of equally strict security regimes.

This had the important secondary effect of enabling US Customs to give Mattel shipments a high-compliance rating in risk-assessment routines with consequent facilitation of rapid and reliable deliveries to distribution centres and customers. This system was seen and taken up by the Port of Cartagena, in Colombia, a country with chronic difficulties in all exports to the USA, given the very high level of associated illicit drug risks.

This BASC derivative, now copied at a number of other points in Colombia and other countries in Latin America, associated Cartagena and other port authorities with a growing constituency of exporters in negotiation and observance of a set of strictly defined and scrupulously observed anti-drug measures and precautions.

US Customs have welcomed, refined and managed these arrangements with substantial benefits in both facilitation and control.

The component product would be an outline agreement with the above characteristics or such lesser facilitation as might be discussed and agreed with US authorities.

It is inevitable that, at the outset, very few exporters will be able to qualify for recognition in such arrangements. In practice, early entrants might be limited to companies already enjoying high-ranking levels in existing US compliance records.

It may be expected, however, that once the facilitation benefits gained by a few highly compliant companies are seen and appreciated these exceptional security-based arrangements could stimulate radical improvements by other shippers and so increase the proportion of Pakistani exports to the US that could reap associated operational benefits.

High compliance levels, achieved initially by a small but influential core commercial constituency, to satisfy US import requirements, through well-managed automated operational and office systems, carefully selected, well-paid staff and fully secured physical premises, would also offer Pakistani Customs the ideal opportunity, given associated reforms in their own systems and operations, to establish their own reliable and facilitating risk-assessment regimes.

It would be tempting, but completely impracticable to propose a set of general reforms and modernisations.

It would be more in accord with the current priorities for Pakistan Customs and practical needs of traders and carriers if attention could be concentrated on mobilising assistance for the eventual application of the WCO revised Kyoto Convention on the Simplification and Harmonisation of Customs Procedures.

It is important that this would help Customs and trade interests move to the central, new feature of the revised Convention, the use of automated risk-assessment and the concept of the Authorised Trader, who, because of proven compliance with the requirements of such a system, could be granted certain facilitated procedures without any consequent risk to revenue collection or other Customs responsibilities.

This fits very neatly into the possible and certainly desirable secondary effects on Pakistani Customs practice, of any ad hoc security arrangement that might be reached with US Customs for import consignments from Pakistan.

Pakistan has not yet signed the revised Convention. To the extent that delay in doing so may be attributable to concerns in Customs and, perhaps, in government about new obligations, especially in respect of the comprehensive General Annex, which now admits of no reservations, the practical work set out in the following Recommendation could be of the greatest interest to the WCO and other members with similar doubts and difficulties.

The component product would be a report and recommendations. If, at the time of this report, Pakistan has not adopted the revised Convention, it should be submitted, for information, to the government. In any event, a copy of the report should be sent to the WCO for comment and circulation to other members.

In the WTO context, "facilitation" has been interpreted almost entirely in terms of Customs reform, and, if at the time the Report is produced, there are any substantive negotiations going forward in this organisation, under that head, the Pakistani delegation to the WTO might wish to include some suitable references to the report findings, experience and recommendations in a written submission to the Council for Trade in Goods.
 

The speed and efficiency with which goods can move through Pakistani ports are governed very largely by three major factors - Customs intervention, port procedures and payment requirements under such suspensive regimes as the documentary credit.

Considerable improvement in Customs practices can be confidently predicted if and when Pakistan adopts and implements the revised WCO Kyoto Convention. The documentary credit is dealt with later in this document under "Payment."

It is at least possible that substantive procedures, determining the ways in which goods move through the Port of Karachi could be simplified and modernised, but this could require detailed analysis, negotiation and, possibly, new formal legislation calling for a time-table well in excess of two years.

It should be feasible to obtain significant practical benefits from a more modest programme of review, definition and transparency.

The component product would be a comprehensive guide to Karachi Port Procedures with suggested arrangements for future up-dating.
 

It is patently impracticable, in the Project time-table, or with its limited resources, to call for extensive measure review or improvement of the full range of transport operations affecting Pakistan’s external trade competitiveness.

It would be most timely, however, for Pakistan to consider how to encourage, develop and make the best use of modern air cargo services.

These have been curiously neglected in global development strategy, possibly because air transport has seemed to the industry itself and so to government civil aviation departments, a matter primarily of passenger movement with, in many developing countries, particular emphasis on tourism.

An additional factor could be the almost unique survival of universal national protection for air services to the point at which the WTO Council on Trade in Services has had to retreat from any early attempt at liberalisation.

Whatever the reasons the results are apparent, undeniable and disturbing. The World Bank website, for example, rich in details of current and recent loan projects and technical assistance programmes of all types, with massive financial investments in road, rail and port infrastructure makes practically no mention of air transport beyond one or two minor airport constructions or extensions. A hundred years on, it is as though, for global development policy, Orville Wright had never flown.

Yet the evidence for air cargo services as a potent development resource is now well established and documented. Shoppers in European and US super-markets fill their caddies with premium green beans from Kenya and asparagus from Peru. A recent World Bank analysis (WB Technical Paper 527) notes that cut flowers are on sale in Swiss shops "only 48 hours after they are cut in Israel."

The new global integrated supply, production and distribution networks are wholly dependent on just-in time delivery services. Much inward foreign investment is focused on sub-contracting and out-sourcing arrangements now typical of garment making, electronic component and automotive assembly industries.

Many developing countries are now seeking to exploit natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas reserves.

All these activities, associated employment and fiscal receipts are impossible without rapid, reliable air-borne cargo delivery services. Conversely, without such facilities, it is impossible for any country to take full advantage of these major commercial and economic opportunities.

The component product would be a report with recommendations for specific actions.
 

Import duties and taxes, collected by Customs are a major element in Pakistan national revenue receipts. One result, as in many other developing economies, is a disturbed and confrontational relationship between Customs and the trading community, not only highly undesirable in itself, but posing a range of associated problems for the efficient functioning of Customs as a positive contribution to Pakistani export competitiveness.

Valuation and classification are at the heart of this frictional interface that infects and degrades the entire Customs/trade relationship. The many undesirable symptoms and consequences, including lost revenue, frequent disputes and appeals, delays to consignments and strong incentives for irregular payments to secure favourable, speedy decisions.

It is relatively easy but sadly impractical to open up public or private debates into commercial and official integrity or reliability. The best way forward lies though transparency and mutual understanding, backed by sensible measures to limit and resolve eventual disputes.

The component products are enumerated above. They should be forwarded to the WTO, WCO and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) for information and use as material for wider, international understanding and application. Here Pakistan has the advantage of having its own national ICC organization, which should be utilised to greater benefit.
 

While a substantial and increasing proportion of international trade, dependent on the movement of materials, components and sub assemblies within international single-company networks, is managed by transfer pricing, much of Pakistan’s external trade still requires and gives rise to transactional payments under classical buyer-seller contracts or sub-contracting agreements.

As long as such payments are isolated by arrangements for settlement through commercial accounting systems they can be managed without any direct effects on the physical handling of related consignments, but many traders still seek the special assurances and security provided by the full-dress documentary credit handled by bankers.

The basis of this method of payment is an elaborate set of carefully drafted conditions under which goods and money move in opposite directions within a meticulously orchestrated timetable and payment is conditional on the presentation, by the buyer, in the country of delivery, of specified documents giving the right to claim the goods.

Such arrangement work very well when all concerned: buyer, seller, banks moving the money and documents, and carriers moving the goods, are uniformly efficient. There are, however, very many opportunities for at least marginal malfunction and the speed of modern multimodal transport operations can often outstrip the passage of documents and payment authorisation through time-consuming communications between local and headquarter banks on both sides of the transaction.

Furthermore the precisions and precautions rightly insisted on by banking intermediaries cast a very heavy burden on commercial users. The slightest discrepancy between stipulated conditions for delivery/payment will halt both movements in their tracks. It is sadly significant that in the UK, reasonably well versed in this now century-old system, some 50% of all initial applications for payment are rejected for some failure to comply with stipulated conditions.

The practical consequences can confuse and complicate individual transactions and, in total, over a period, do much to reduce commercial competitiveness, so that sound production and innovative marketing can be negated by customer dissatisfaction at chronic delays in delivery. Valuable port space is clogged, warehousing costs mount and overall delays are unfairly blamed on Customs or port managers.

Reform, or even review, is very difficult, because the banks, who administer documentary credits, are, after Customs and the Port of Karachi, probably the most authoritarian actors in Pakistan international trade operations.

They lend money to the commercial community and, in a number of other respects, are frequently required to offer status reports or undertake guarantees.

In such circumstances, the individual business customer is unlikely to volunteer to lead an inquisitive foray into banking efficiency. Furthermore any assessment of the quality of management of the documentary credit system in Pakistan has to be subjective and governed by necessarily limited experience. It is hardly likely that a Pakistani trader will be able to make a valid comparison of the same banking procedure in the hands of a Zurich or Stockholm bank and the same tasks executed by a local Pakistani bank manager.

There can be few more important elements in Pakistani international trade competitiveness than an ability to pay and get paid promptly and economically.

There are two inter-related central issues – the size, efficiency and procedural side-effects of the documentary credit system as it may currently be used in Pakistan and the extent to which these characteristics could call for alternative methods of payment and the ways in which and conditions under which these could be attractive and feasible.

A small expert group representing traders, carriers, banks, the Port of Karachi and Customs should:

The component product would be a report with recommendations for specific actions. This should be forwarded to the ICC, for attention by its Commission on Banking Technique and Practice, which sets principles for the commercial use and banking administration of documentary credits and is currently examining possible revisions and amendments in the light of electronic business procedures.
 

Each item in the proposed action programme would be handled by a small expert group drawn from those sectors most concerned by present constraints and most likely to profit from eventual solutions.

The primary aim of these ten detailed tasks is not simply to achieve some tangible, visible benefit for the Pakistani trader and so, for the Pakistan economy, but also to use the powerful catalyst of shared effort for achievable, admittedly common interests and objectives. This will strengthen solidarity in, and so the influence of, the business community, and foster an effective, durable synergy across the official/commercial animosities that have played such a divisive part in earlier attempts so give Pakistan the benefits of modern, efficient international trade procedures and practices.

Each group should be linked, from the outset, to relevant activities in a range of inter-governmental and global trade organisations. To this end it is suggested that a copy of the final Project, once amended, as necessary, and approved should be sent, with suitable covering letter, to all the international organisations listed in each recommendation under "External International Support" (see Annex).

Such arrangements will help short-circuit the tendency, common in traditional trade facilitation practice, to offer developing countries processed versions of improvements achieved twenty or thirty years ago in developed industrial economies. Pakistani interests, in direct touch with the latest thinking and innovation, should be able, themselves, to work out how best to adapt and profit from such advances.

Some of tasks, including those dealing with security and revenue-raising reflect urgent current difficulties. Others, for example, various aspects of information handling, may seem more pedestrian but set the quality of responses to all other problems, urgent or otherwise.

Each group would need secretarial services which might well be supplied, on a voluntary basis, by the sector most central to the activity, for example the Port of Karachi, for the Port Procedures exercise and Customs for the work on the revised Kyoto Convention.

The secretariats would arrange meetings, produce minutes and circulate these, as decided by members, but, in any event, in priority, to a central managing committee. That committee should be responsible for appointing Chairmen of groups, preferably without any direct interests in the work items concerned. All Chairmen would be ex-officio members of the central committee and its main working link to the expert groups.

Each group would be supplied with a basic working paper, extending the description of its focal tasks, identifying and describing relevant activities elsewhere and referencing useful documents and other information sources. Each working paper would contain a draft time–table, which should be considered, amended as necessary and then approved at the initial group meeting and transmitted to the central managing committee for use in checking and assisting practical progress over the Project period.

Expert groups should be substantially in the hands of those concerned in the operation of the particular procedures and practices under review. Other "outside" membership should be restricted, as far as possible, to facilitate easy well-focused and economical working.

While the proposals for work by expert groups are selected to produce improvements at separate points in the international transaction, success in the overall Project will depend on sustained central co-ordination by the central managing committee. These functions could be entrusted to the National Trade and Transport Facilitation Committee (NTTFC).

The Committee, which would need to meet at least quarterly, would maintain co-operative working relationships between expert groups and manage and facilitate contacts between these groups and the Government of Pakistan and external international organisations.

The suggested remit to some groups call for a report and recommendations for specific action. It is essential that the groups identify, in their reports, those agencies to which recommendations are addressed and that the reports, themselves, contain all the information and evidence necessary to enable policy makers to reach an early favourable decision. It is essential to avoid the temptation to stifle action in a series of successive analytical studies and pious hopes for eventual improvement.

One of the many difficulties faced by all national Facilitation Committees is that significant improvements often require amendments to legislation and other official requirements or basic changes in company policy at Board level. If policy makers at these levels are brought to membership of the NTTFC, their attention will soon waver and their personal attendance fall away in the face of a mass of, often pedestrian, detail over a very wide range of different activities. It is very hard for a port general manager to extract any strategic marrow from the tactical bones of banking practice, or for a Director General Customs, to follow the niceties of ground handling contracts.

The expert groups, proposed in the Project, therefore, will need to submit their reports and concerns to the central committee in such a form that the necessary policy issues emerge clearly from the supporting factual background. This should ensure that that the decision makers, assembled for that committee, will be properly employed and suitably stimulated.

One of the useful by-products of a Project carried through on these lines would be a notable Pakistani contribution to a long-overdue review, possibly in the WTO, of the role, character and usefulness of national facilitation committees.

Suggested project activities have been selected to offer a reasonable chance of overall implementation within a common time-table of two years. Several major facilitation objectives will take much longer and many will call for constant review and up-dating, but some early tangible results, within that set time-scale will obtain essential credibility and support for future activities.

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