IOS Partners, along with its affiliate IOSsoft, have been awarded a contract for $3.1 million by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to support the development of a new international Single Window (Ventanilla Única de Comercio Exterior, or VUCE) in Peru.
Logistics and transportation costs are some of the main obstacles for Peru’s ability to participate in international trade. On average, these costs are three times higher than tariffs and are part of the reason why Peru is only ranked 92nd under the “Trading Across Borders” subcategory in the latest Doing Business report. Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are among the most affected by these inefficiencies and cannot afford to overcome them.
The IOS Partners team has extensive legal, operational and administrative experience dealing with similar trade facilitation opportunities all over the world. The scope of our work in Peru is to help the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism (MINCETUR) simplify and modernize all the major regulatory processes for import and export of goods by using a new VUCE 2.0 electronic system. The implementation will follow the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) workflow and will include the modernization of service standards and the streamline of the participating ministries and agencies operations.
The ultimate goals of VUCE 2.0 is to reduce the number of transactions, time and costs for economic operators. The experts within IOSsoft foresee that it will also facilitate the participation of more firms in global value chains, especially SMEs that have limited resources to comply with repeated and cumbersome international trade procedures. According to Pedro Souss, IOSsoft’s managing director, “the most advanced feature of VUCE 2.0 is its capacity to connect and inter-operate across multiple borders. International trade procedures are carried out through electronic means from the country of origin, through transit, until the final destination country. VUCE 2.0 not only reduces costs for firms but it also reduces costs for foreign trade administrations and increases their quality of service.”
The VUCE 2.0 contract in Peru continues IOS Partners and IOSsoft’s successful line of single window and trade facilitation projects in 2017 (Jordan, Central America and Trinidad Tobago) and speaks to our expertise and commitment to tackling global economic development issues.
