Policy Address

Promote Digital Trade

110. The Government will promote the digitalisation of trade to lower costs and improve efficiency. Relevant measures are as follows:

  1. The HKMA will develop a roadmap for Project Cargox 8 by the end of the year. Through Commercial Data Interchange (CDI), and working with the AAHK and the Port Community System, the trial project will leverage cargo data to reduce credit costs and processing time for banks and SMEs.

  2. The HKMA will explore cross-boundary financial collaboration with the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Data and other parties under Project Ensemble, such as the application of tokenised electronic bills of lading, as well as advancing connections with CDI and Cargox to facilitate trade finance with the use of cargo data.

  3. A logistics provider will be recruited as an additional pilot participant of the Cross-boundary Express Cargo Clearance Facilitation Arrangement (CEFA) to enhance the efficiency of e-commerce shipment.

  4. The Trade Single Window will be expanded progressively to cover more trade documents. In parallel, the Government, together with the Mainland's General Administration of Customs, will work to connect the single windows of Hong Kong and the Mainland, and explore the feasibility of extending the existing "Single Submission for Dual Declaration" Scheme to include other trade documents and transport modes. In addition, the Government will discuss the possibility of connecting the single windows with ASEAN.

  5. The Government will introduce a legislative proposal next year for the digitalisation of business-to-business trade documents.

Remark 8: Project Cargox is a public-private collaboration launched by the HKMA, focusing on leveraging cargo data to streamline and enhance trade finance processes; developing digital solutions to improve accessibility to trade finance for SMEs; and exploring connections with international data partners to facilitate the trade financing use case for banks in Hong Kong.