Paperless trade among APEC economies attainable in 10 years
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-06-16 14:28

E-commerce business will be popularized among all members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in ten years, said sources with the APEC e-Commerce Business Alliance Forum (AEBAF) opened on Tuesday in Yantai City, east China's Shandong Province.

With digitalized enterprises: cornerstone of E-commerce as the major topic, the forum aims to establish communication channels between governments and enterprises and between enterprises themselves and to encourage the APEC economies to pay more attention to the development of paperless trade and facilitate trade among APEC members.

The forum started up the 2004-2006 paperless trade program adopted in the APEC high-level conference held in Chile this year.

The APEC ministerial conference held in Kuala Lumpur in October 1998, capital of Malaysia designed the blueprint of the APEC E-commerce project. According to the blueprint, by 2005, paperless trade will be realized in developed economies, by 2010, it will be realized in developing economies. And by 2015, all APEC members will practice no-paper trade between each other.

The two-day forum was sponsored by the Department of Information Technology of the Ministry of Commerce and China International E-commerce Center. The APEC E-commerce exposition also opened on Tuesday.