Africa’s Standard Bank urges Regulators to ease Digital Trade
Africa’s Standard Bank has urged regulators to amend regulations that restrict digital trade in order to ease the economic impact of Covid-19.
Vinod Madhavan, head of trade for Standard Bank Group, highlighted how the current limitations on movement have had a significant impact on trade – and created an opportunity to digitise trade, which traditionally centres around physically intensive processes such as paperwork, signatures, and manual data entry.
Madaven points to regulatory hurdles – including outdated rule and the atomisation of regulation across countries – that are preventing new digital solutions being implemented. For example, he notes that in some countries if someone wants to issue a guarantee the standard is to use a physical piece of paper – a lengthy and manual process.
Many elements of the trade data trail could be digitised, with transaction data and digital signatures replacing manual checks and improving the potential for analytics. If regulations could be amended and aligned, digital solutions could be built collaboratively across countries, moving the industry from paper to data and reducing the impact of Covid-19.
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