BSEC-URTA Working Group on Digitalization Held its second meeting with the support of BSEC
BSEC-URTA Working Group on Digitalization Held its second meeting on 24.05.2022 online to discover the ways to bring digitalization to the international road transport in the BSEC region.
As the decisions of the first BSEC-URTA Working Group on Digitalization, the two representatives from the two important logistic countries of the BSEC region realized presentations about digitalization processes and projects, Turkey and Bulgaria
Mr. Ahmet Karakaş, President of the Working Group, shared the ongoing projects of digitalization in Turkey, eTIR, ePermit, and eCMR. Mr. Karakas representing TOBB, a Chamber responsible for printing and allocating paper road permits of over 1 million successfully each year, underlined the importance of the introduction of digitalization of road permits for international road transport both for environmental and facilitation needs.
Mr. Ventsislav Trendafilov, in his presentation, shared the current digitalization processes and needs of international road transport in Bulgaria under the European Union perspective, underlining that the digitalization is the guardian of trade and international road transport proved by the COVID pandemic and war, which showed the need of less physical contact between the drivers and faster border crossings.
Mr. Trendafilov also underlined that border crossings should be under focus by the BSEC authorities and BSEC-URTA Working Group on Digitalization.
BSEC PERMIS Project Coordinator Mr. Sergii KRAVCHENKOparticipated in the BSEC-URTA Digilaziation working group, shared the activities of BSEC PERMIS and the latest developments in the ITF forum realized recently from the perspective of the digitalization of international road transport.
Mr. Kravchenko expressed the hope for enlargement of the geographical coverage of the Permit and underlined that the BSEC permit is one of the first international road transport documents which BSEC and BSEC-URTA are working together to transform it into the digital format.
In this regard, the Working Group underlined that Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, and Greece are the three important countries hope to be part of the BSEC permit system in order to form an united will and synergy among the member countries for the creation of the first digital road permit in the international road transport industry.
The BSEC-URTA Working Group on Digitalization agreed upon prioritizing the “electronic driver visas” project among others due to the importance of this issue for the international road transporters in the BSEC Region, and in this regard, decided to present the request of the working group to the forthcoming meetings of the officials from the BSEC Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the implementation of “electronic driver visas” in the BSEC region.
The working group also decided to invite other working group members to realize presentations reflecting the digitalization studies of international road transport in their countries to promote good digitalization examples in the BSEC region.
