USAID partners with Oracle and US-ASEAN Business Council on Single Window

Through a memorandum of understanding, the alliance plans to help speed up ASEAN’s integration efforts on electronic cross-border exchange of cargo clearance data.

USAID has supported the ASEAN Single Window (ASW) initiative since early 2008 and is working together with the ASEAN Secretariat and the ASW Steering Committee to get the private sector involved early in its development. 

“The traders are the end users of the single window system,” said Olivier Carduner, director of USAID’s Regional Development Mission to Asia. “We are working with Oracle and USABC to provide ASEAN with critical private sector input so that the end product reflects a real public-partnership for trade.”

Oracle will contribute its expertise of IT platforms and its understanding in diagnosing business processes to help gather private sector input. 

“We are a strong supporter of the ASEAN’s vision for the single window and the benefits it will bring to business”, said K Raman, Oracle regional managing director - ASEAN.

Oracle is working with four of its key corporate partners in the region—UPS, Nike, Kraft, and Sun Microsystems - to empirically track the time and cost savings these companies would experience with a fully-realised ASEAN Single Window system.

The ASW for customs clearance is a key element of ASEAN’s economic integration strategy to achieve the ASEAN Community by 2015.  The single window program will use technology to help combine the ASEAN nations’ processes for customs clearances into one integrated system.

USABC and USAID recently released the results of the first-ever survey of private sector on the ASW, which solicited USABC’s members’ views on key functions to be featured both in the National Single Windows and in the ASW, including which trading forms should be processed electronically. While the results from the survey showed that two-thirds of respondents had not heard of the ASW, nearly 90 percent wanted to receive more information and updates about it. 

USABC represents over 100 major U.S. corporations active in the Southeast Asia.

“The Single Window is a game changer for ASEAN. It will greatly increase the ease of doing business across ASEAN and allow for further connectivity gains for the region”, said Alexander Feldman, president of the US-ASEAN Business Council.  “We will continue to advocate for the ASW at the national and regional levels as part of our official dialogues with the ASEAN Economic Ministers.”