blockchain © Elnur
© Elnur

Singapore’s Get Go Global (Go) and Fast Track Trade (FTT) are to promote one another’s platforms in an effort to push digitisation across the Asia-Pacific region.

As part of the agreement, Go and Cites Gestion – the company behind FTT – will work alongside the Asia Pacific Trade Coalition (AMTC) to promote the benefits of digitisation.

Go says FTT is the first Singapore-headquartered operator to provide a blockchain-based digital trade platform to the local SME community.

“It allows SMEs to seek business partners and distributors, buy and sell goods, and track shipments. Additionally, it can receive and make payments, access financing and buy insurance via an eco-system of service providers on the FTT platform.”

Agnes Hugot, co-founder of Cites Gestion, said African, Asean and Middle East countries were also showing “strong demand” for these digital products.

She said the deal opened up a potential community of more than 5,000 Singaporean SMEs.

“We plan to open FTT to emerging Asean markets in 2019 and we also identified a financing gap linked to a lack of trust and access to services, especially for SMEs,” said Ms Hugot.

“Digital platforms such as FTT and Go use blockchain to increase transaction transparency and traceability, which could boost trade corridors in South-east Asia.”

Go will offer its freight forwarding platform Go Freight to FTT customers to provide real-time quotes, bookings and payments services. Furthermore, it will assess the use of FTT’s blockchain to share a common audit trail, with Go chief executive Au Kah Soon expressing a “commitment” to SMEs.

“Speed to market is crucial in a competitive market place that already ships over 90m teu of ocean freight and 5m tonnes of airfreight across Asean,” he said.

“Our team is committed to helping smaller businesses create an agile supply chain through our easy-to-use platforms that are available anytime on their phone, tablet or computer.”

FTT and Go also intend to partner with AMTC to promote the service to its growing membership of more than 1,300 SMEs.

Raymon Krishnan secretary general of ABTA, of which the AMTC is a member, said: “Logistics challenges are a hurdle that many SMEs identify as a challenge when venturing abroad and GO helps overcome this.

“Distributed ledger technology is still gaining momentum and misunderstood by many, but FTT makes this game-changing technology accessible.”

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