Paperless Trade 2.0: Quantifying the Commonwealth’s Trade Advantage builds on the Commonwealth Secretariat’s 2022 analysis and brings new data, deeper modelling, regional and income-group analysis and practical case studies from across our membership. It moves the case for paperless trade from broad principle to clear evidence and from evidence to action.
The study examines the impact of moving towards paperless trade across the Commonwealth, from 2025 to 2030. In order to do so, the study considers observed DTF values between 2019 and 2025 to predict future progress, giving more weight to recent years while still accounting for earlier trends.
The transition from paper-based to paperless trade offers a pathway to lower costs and greater efficiency and global trade participation for Commonwealth member countries. Paper dependent systems impose delays, duplication and errors that Disproportionately affects small and medium-sized enterprises, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) and small island developing states.
Transitioning from paper-based to paperless trade documentation has become increasingly important in the effort to drive efficiency in global commerce. International trade transactions are by their nature complicated by the involvement of various parties and the need for a multitude of documents. One single trade transaction can take 2–3 months and involve 30 parties, 40 documents, 240 copies and 200 data elements. The paper-based nature of the system has led to a great deal of delay, errors and costs that go on to represent constraints to international trade.
The study examines the impact of moving towards paperless trade across the Commonwealth, from 2025 to 2030. In order to do so, the study considers observed DTF values between 2019 and 2025 to predict future progress, giving more weight to recent years while still accounting for earlier trends. In essence, countries continue to perform based on prior efforts to digitalise trade documents and progress on a steady and data-driven trajectory of digital trade development, where progress continues gradually as countries build on their ongoing digitalisation reforms
