On Monday, 3 April, a press conference was held in Ashgabat dedicated to the Trade Information Portal of Turkmenistan, which will be officially launched today on 4 April, Turkmen media reported.
The event was organized jointly by the International Trade Center and the Ministry of Trade and Foreign Economic Relations of Turkmenistan with the support of the Delegation of the European Union to Turkmenistan.
The Trade Information Portal of Turkmenistan provides a step-by-step guidance of import, export and transit procedures and contains more than 250 samples of forms and documents – these are licenses, permits, certificates required for import, export and transit procedures that small and medium-sized entrepreneurs must submit and/or receive from each border regulatory authority. It also provides information on all necessary fees and payments.
This platform will be useful for potential Turkmen and foreign investors, development partners, international organizations, exporters, importers, customs brokers and freight forwarders.
In addition, the platform will allow government decision makers to assess the impact of regulatory requirements to address administrative gaps.
To date, the Trade Information Portal of Turkmenistan includes 25 strategically important commodity groups of products with an emphasis on the agri-food sector and 418 codes of the commodity nomenclature of foreign economic activity. The rate of import and export duties depends on which code the product belongs to.
The introduction of a digital trade platform in Turkmenistan is another step towards the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization, in particular, the implementation of the protocol on trade facilitation.
The platform was developed within the framework of the Ready4Trade Central Asia – European Union project with the technical assistance of the International Trade Center. The Ministry of Trade and Foreign Economic Relations of Turkmenistan is the main implementing partner.
The portal already operates in other Central Asian countries – in Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and has more than 1.5 million global users and 150,000 users in Central Asia. ///nCa, 4 April 2023