Lack of standardization China loses trillions of dollars a year in foreign trade

"China Economic Weekly" reporter Song | Beijing reported a batch of export lamps that could have made 100,000 dollars, because Chinese companies write the country code on the shipping document as three digits instead of the United Nations standard, the goods are excluded from the local customs computer system in a country, and the goods are pressed for three months.　　Not only did not make money but greatly lost a sum. This is not an isolated case. According to the 2009 Guangdong Foreign Trade and Economic Association of Guangdong Trade Enterprises Survey showed that the annual total of 400 billion U.S. dollars in foreign trade business, because of the lack of understanding of international trade standards resulting in payment can not be recycled ratio of 5%, the total amount of about 20 billion U.S. dollars. "This error rate is 20 times times that of foreign countries.　　"Ministry of Commerce license Bureau senior engineer, former foreign business counselor Meng Juming told China Economic Weekly." "Because of our country's export enterprises lack of understanding of international trade standards, documents, labels and other international standards caused by the stagnation, pressure warehouse, returns and other events, making our country in the international trade process simplification and standardization of the actual loss of more than 1 trillion yuan per year." "These losses are at the top of the world," Meng Juming said. November 25, the National Development and Reform Commission Training center in conjunction with the AQSIQ China Standardization Institute launched the International Trade standardization popularization and application project.　　NDRC Training Center Director Dupin said, hope that the implementation of the project, can partially or completely restore our current international trade procedures to simplify and standardize the loss.　　The documents, documents and certificates applied in international settlement are used to deal with the payment, transportation, insurance, commodity inspection and settlement of international goods by means of the document, document, certificate and so on.　　According to Meng Juming, the domestic existing 60多万家 import and export enterprise, because of the international trade procedure simplification and the standardization lacks the comprehensive, the systematic understanding, often because does not conform to the International Standard (Convention), the single goods discrepancy (the document and the actual goods are verified inconsistent), causes the stagnation, the pressure storehouse, the return, the goods damage In addition to the resulting losses, a survey by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development also showed that international trade documents alone accounted for an average of 8% per cent of world trade.　　The reason is that, compared with domestic trade, the number of documents in international trade and processing costs are high. "To do a single international trade, to involve production, ordering, banking, insurance, transport, transport agents, imports, exports (re-exports), and other 45 institutions issued nearly 360 documents." Meng Juming told China Economic Weekly, "if China's international trade volume reaches 2.8 trillion U.S. dollars this year, our country will spend more than $200 billion on international trade documents this year." This even exceeds the total profit of the existing foreign trade enterprises.　　"The complexity of the document is also a lot of foreign trade enterprises can not fully grasp the personnel." "Take the electric blanket for example, its customs code is 6301.1000,6301 is a blanket, 1000 is electrothermal." If the latter 4 digits are 2000, it is made of wool. If in 6301.2000 and then add 10 to 6301.2000.10, which means wool electric blanket with a length not exceeding 3 cm. "Dalian Berride International Logistics Co., Ltd. general manager Zhei told China Economic Weekly," now most enterprises in the low-cost operation stage, the lack of talent, and even many foreign trade enterprises bosses do not understand the rules of international trade, but also do not understand the country's import and export business requirements,　　So many small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises will be specific customs clearance for some of the domestic customs companies or international logistics enterprises to do.　　Zhei Frankly, the foreign trade enterprise management is not sound, the profit is too low, the state is opaque to the import and export management system, all levels of customs and customs staff to interpret the management provisions are inconsistent, are caused by the lack of standardization of the important reasons. Meng Juming told reporters, even the customs officials said, why standardize?　　The customs will decide without the standard. The first according to the Meng Juming of the technical barriers of the trade of the documents, the international trade involves many laws, regulations, agreements and conventions, which are already basically complete. However, international trade also involves many complex procedures and institutions, in addition to importers and exporters, the transport sector, insurance companies, customs and their customs agents, banks, terminals, commodity inspection agencies, government and other official agencies, but also related to language, currency, time difference, space differences, trade practices conflict and so on, At the same time also involves a variety of international trade documents. These are so-called technical barriers. "The document standardization barrier is ranked as the first in international trade technical barrier." "Wang Zhongmin, dean of China's Institute of Standardization, told China Economic Weekly," according to the WTO data, technical barriers have become the biggest obstacle to international trade, and technical barriers are usually the manifestation of standards. "Before the United Nations unified standards, the world's millions of foreign trade enterprises to do their own documents, without any contact, the data can not be exchanged." "Meng Juming said that, in view of international standards in various countries often have different standards, the United Nations trade facilitation and Electronic Operations Committee (UN/CEFACT) from the early 60 began to engage in international trade process simplification and standardization work, developed the first international trade procedure Simplification Standard"　　The United Nations Trade document style, which was recommended for use in the United Nations framework in 1981, in the form of a proposal. Subsequently, the United Nations trade facilitation and Electronic Operations Commission introduced 33 proposals, 7 sets of standards and 5 sets of technical specifications, creating a globally harmonized set of trade facilitation measures and standards, "aimed at simplifying the trade process and reducing disputes arising from it." Meng Juming told reporters, "This set of standards has been applied in all countries of the world, directly promote the rapid development of international trade." Singapore 1994 pioneered the use of this set of standards, has been a single international trade declaration time from 80 hours to 12 minutes, traditional hand-made documents shortened from 30 hours to 30 minutes, greatly improving production efficiency, thus becoming a veritable trade power. Even the AfricanIn some countries, they do better in standard documents than at home.　　"Meng Juming also gave an example of the image to illustrate the importance of the standard, once they visited Germany, because a member of the box is too large to pass the security equipment, but the local security personnel opened a check, and finally missed the flight. "Our foreign trade is big and not strong, one of the important reasons is not to pay attention to standards."　　"Meng Juming said. How important is the standardization of documents in the 10-year interruption of domestic trade standardization work?　　In Meng Juming view, so far there are still many foreign trade industry personnel awareness. "For example, many enterprises to their own trademark graphics, such as the so-called Mark to get a document, not to be recognized by the computer, but the goods in the foreign cause of the problem and no one told you, so the enterprise continued to make mistakes." "What's even more frightening is that our generation of international trade personnel have been trained in this way," Meng Juming said. "The 33 standard proposals of the United Nations are issued and maintained at all times, but many of the standards we have followed are revised only once in 10 and 20, and are far from being developed." The country's "professional Qualification standards" and "China professional ceremony", the field of international trade is still blank.　　"Meng Juming said. According to experts, due to our country's lack of attention to international trade simplification and standardization, related work has been interrupted for 10 years.　　At the same time, there are not a textbook on international trade standardization in more than 1000 colleges and universities with international trade speciality, and none of them have a standardized teaching subject in international trade, and there is no relevant training. Wang Zhongmin told reporters that because of the United Nations on the standardization of international trade proposals and standards are numerous, but also the English version, for the Chinese users is very difficult. China Institute of Standardization has carried out many years of in-depth research, the recommendations, standards and technical specifications have been scientifically classified, to provide users with international trade procedures to simplify and standardize the use of reference, manuals and guidelines for use.　　He hoped that through cooperation with the National Development and Reform Commission Training center, the foreign Trade industry competent departments, foreign trade officials, entrepreneurs, foreign trade professionals are aware of these standards. "The standardization of international trade in our country to promote the real application of a very hard work and coordination, still need a number of departments and various people to work together and support." "Wang Zhongmin said.