G20 officials to meet at Kevadia for digitalisation of trade documents

Senior officials of G20 member countries will gather at Kevadia for three days to build consensus on proposals, including digitalisation of trade documents

Senior officials of G20 member countries will gather at Kevadia for three days from July 10 to build consensus on proposals, including digitalisation of trade documents, and an action plan to create meta information interface for MSMEs, an official statement said on Saturday.

These proposals will be discussed at the third meeting of the Trade and Investment Working Group (TIWG). The meeting will be attended by more than 75 delegates from G20 member countries, invitee countries, regional groupings and international organisations.

"The focus of the meeting would be to build consensus on accomplishing action-oriented proposals put forward by the Indian Presidency on global trade and investment-related issues, the commerce and industry ministry said.

These proposals relate to developing high-level principles for digitalization of trade documents, action plan to create meta information interface for MSMEs, generic mapping framework for global value chains, G20 regulatory dialogue and preparing a compendium on best practices for Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs), it said.

In this backdrop, during the third meeting, the Presidency is now striving for consensus-building among the G20 member countries for eventual adoption of these proposals.

During the first and second meeting of the TIWG, the member countries discussed five priority issues including trade for growth and prosperity, resilient trade and global value chains; integrating MSMEs in world trade, logistics, and WTO reforms.

"Based on the opinions/suggestions expressed by the G20 member/invitee countries in these discussions, the Indian Presidency has formulated action-oriented concrete proposals on each of the priority issues," it added.

Inputs from the meetings will be suitably incorporated while drafting the ministerial communique which will be adopted during the G20 Trade and Investment Ministerial Meeting scheduled at Jaipur from August 24-25.