The Royal Malaysian Customs Department (RMCD) along with the Malaysia branch of an American cognitive solutions multinational technology and an integrated container logistics company announced a collaboration on 5 October 2020 aimed at using the blockchain-enabled TradeLens platform in Malaysia to modernise the shipping processes, create greater transparency and enhance customer satisfaction.
This collaboration supports the country’s effort to promote trading and economic stability by facilitating ease of doing business. The Director-General of the RMCD stated that the department was delighted to work together with the tech giants to digitise its operations. He noted that by joining TradeLens, the government aims to boost the efficiency, transparency and collaboration across supply chains.
The platform will help bring further visibility in a highly secure environment and will be a real asset for trade and transport facilitation, making Malaysia the preferred logistics and transport gateway in the region. By adopting the platform, it is hoped that the department will be enabled to fulfil its mission to facilitate legitimate trade, help combat smuggling and modernize the national logistics systems in support of Malaysia’s digital economy aspirations.
By digitising shipping processes, the platform will provide RMCD with an automatic and immutable tracking tool which will lead to a more highly secure, transparent, efficient and simpler workflow, with near real-time information sharing from a diverse network of ecosystem members.
TradeLens is a digital global trade platform that enables more efficient and accurate container tracking and information sharing among platform members. It digitises the voluminous, time consuming paper-based shipping processes.
Paper-based procedures are said to have created some pain points throughout the global supply chain system, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) estimating digital technologies will have a profound impact on global trade, adding up to 34 percentage points to trade growth by 2030.
With the platform, authorities will now be able to receive shipping data as soon as containers leave the port of origin.
The Managing Director of the Malaysian branch of the multinational technology believes that the platform and the implementation of blockchain technology in various forms will drive the modernisation and facilitation of trade and benefit all stakeholders in the logistics ecosystem.
The platform will give RMCD more time to prepare for the arrival of shipments. This will enable a more efficient and thorough fraud and forgery inspection as well as a more consistent and transparent revenue collection process.
With the Collaboration Application Programming Interface (API) concept, all logistic activities including trucking, warehousing, shipping and freight forwarding at both domestic and global levels can now be integrated which will also improve the sharing of data-rich information through a single platform.
The blockchain technology inside the TradeLens platform promotes trust among trading partners as the record of all transactions is shared within the network and permissioned parties can access the data in real-time.
It was noted that the platform aims to bring innovation to the global trade ecosystem, and customs authorities play a critical role in this transformation. Through it, RMCD will have permissioned visibility into supply chain activities with verified, highly trusted and near real-time data.
RMCD joins a number of government authorities, shipping agencies, ocean carriers and port authorities to have partnered with the multinational technology firm and the Danish integrated shipping company globally.
The collaboration reflects the firms’ commitment to consistently support the government’s vision to develop a knowledge-based digital through the socialization of transformative technologies.
