Leon Lacroix

When it comes to international trade, it means that your goods are moved out of physical boundary of your country. For many reasons, documentary proof is required because, there should be an evidencing proof for all the transactions you make. So I suggest always to make a habit of writing, rather than speaking in international trade.

So proper documentation helps you and your overseas buyer in handling your transactions in all means including time management, payment protection, claim on loss etc.

I will explain you major three perspectives in documentation.

a). Commercial purpose: Once the export order finalized between buyer and seller, normally a contract of sales is prepared mentioning all terms and conditions each exporter and importer should follow. So all related documents like invoice, packing list, certificate of origin, insurance, bills of exchange etc. are prepared on the basis of sales contract signed by both importer and exporter.

b) Legal perspectives: In India, for example, all import export trade activities are effected legally as per the guidelines of Foreign Exchange Management Act. In each country, there will be government regulatory authority to control the import and export of the said country’s trade. The government of each country has their own instructions to have export documentation legally filed.

c) Incentives: You can not claim any government assistance or support unless you have a proper documentation on your exports. There are many financial assistance and supports given by the government of each country to support exporters and earn foreign exchange which is the indication of wealth of the respective nation.

I recommend achieving supply chain transparency because I am convinced that all supply chain partners will benefit from such transparency. Blockchain is a means to this end. But the technology enough does not suffice. Critical design decisions will define the degree of benefits. These include which data will be shared, from which sources, how qualitative this data will be, and in which format it will be captured. Solving the supply chain transparency problem requires access to rich structured data from reliable sources.

To get the lowest rates from shipping lines, you can first get the quotations from different shipping lines. Once you have the information, you can compare the rates considering their services, time-line etc., and then negotiate the rates with a couple of shipping lines.

To promote your business, you can take the help of B2B portals and create an effective company profile and product catalog which will increase the search ranking of your company profile online. In the same way, Export Portal promotes the business of many exporters and helps them to expand their business. You can also read different articles and blogs related to import & export to get advanced knowledge which will help you to enhance your skills related to trading.

Good question. Companies can be partners while at the same time competitors. They do not want to share all their information with all the parties in their network. How does Blockchain deal with this, thereby making Blockchain for global trade a feasible solution? Several solutions are possible. One solution is encryption. If a company encrypts its shared data, other parties in the network cannot understand it, even if they have a copy of it. A party always remains the owner of its own data, and it defines access rights to its information. For example, a shipper can decide that its freight forwarder can read some of its data and that the Customs administration can read all of its data. In such a case, the freight forwarder will obtain a key to decrypt some of the data, and the Customs administration will obtain a key to decrypt all of the data.