Policy Brief – Global Supply Chains and Trade Facilitation: Identifying the Contours of an Indian Approach

The congruence between trade facilitation and greater resilience of supply chains has never been as clear. The Covid-19 pandemic’s disruptive impact on supply chains drove home the necessity of safeguarding supply chains as global and national priorities and elevated the significance of trade facilitation.

Trade facilitation discussions over the last decade have been shaped entirely by the motivation to reduce the cost of doing business across borders through procedural simplifications. On-border requirements for the movements of goods, comprising lengthy documentation-heavy procedures resulting in delays and high concomitant costs for exporters and importers, have been obstructive and slowed the speed at which goods could leave and enter borders.

Global efforts, including efforts from India, to streamline trade procedures after the adoption of the Trade Facilitation Agreement of the WTO in 2017 have led to gradual reforms in border procedures across the world and brought down the cost of movements in goods. However, those reforms did not prevent widespread disruptions in global supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic.