Workshop "Digitizing Global Trade (DGT)" held in Budva

As representatives of the Administration for Maritime Safety and Port Management, Deputy Director Mr. Nexhat Kapidani and Mrs. Nevenka Kruta, participated in the workshop entitled "Digitizing Global Trade (DGT) - Implementation of pre-arrival processing for postal and maritime ships in line with the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement" organized by the Revenue and Customs Administration of Montenegro and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit).

The workshop was held physically in Budva, Montenegro, while some presentations were delivered via ZOOM. Apart from Administration for Maritime Safety and Port Management, the workshop was attended by all Montenegrin stakeholders in maritime trade, such as Customs, agents, forwarders, etc. and also representatives of German Alliance for Trade Facilitation, DHL, GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), experts from German Customs Administration, etc.

On this occasion, among other topics, a session dedicated to maritime traffic was held, which was an excellent opportunity to present current international investment and scientific research projects implemented by the Administration for Maritime Safety and Port Management and funded by the European Commission. In this regard, the current status of the IPA II project was presented. Particular emphasis was placed on the part of this project related to the concept of the National Maritime Single Window (NMSW), as a modern, improved instrument to facilitate reporting procedures and electronic submission of regular documentation of shipping companies to all participants in the maritime transport process during ships entering/leaving the territorial waters of Montenegro. Also, the NMSW system aims to reduce the duration of procedures for submitting various documentation on ship and cargo and data exchange between ship and port, in accordance with FAL forms, and IMO Commission for Facilitation of Overseas Trade (IMO Trade Facilitation Committee) recommendations from 19th April 2019, and digitization of these processes through a single electronic platform which will enable access to the necessary information from the abovementioned forms from own legacy IT systems of all relevant participants.

Furthermore, Kapidani presented another very important project in the Administration for Maritime Safety and Port Management, ePIcenter, whose full name is Enhanced Physical Internet-Compatible Earth-frieNdly freight Transportation answer, which is funded by the European Commission under the scientific-research program, Horizon2020. In this project, from the call intended to increase efficiency in integrated multimodal transport, low-emission transport systems and logistics through international cooperation of partner institutions, the Administration participates as one of the partners with a consultative role in maritime digitalization, safety and NMSW. This project is based on a multidisciplinary approach that covers areas such as supply chain synchromodality, digitization and standardization in maritime / shipping, big data, blockchain, container flow management, artificial intelligence, hyperloop, T-pods, marine environment protection, etc. At the end of the presentation, the audience was shown a short promotional film about the project (https://vimeo.com/565979615).

More information about ePIcenter can be found here: https://epicenterproject.eu/

Beside mentioned presentations, there was also talk of the EUREKA project, whose full name is „Adriatic-Ionian joint approach for development and harmonization of procedures and regulations in the field of navigation safety“, funded by ADRION programme.