India digitalizes its bills of lading and additional trade documentation workflows by using blockchain technology as part of its Port Community System.
The Indian Ports Association (IPA) and the trade bodies in the Federation of Indian Logistics Association (FILA) emphasized the importance of digitalization to the shipping industry and government officals.
Additionally, except the digitalization, India joined a growing call across the industry for digitization both to improve port operations and to address the challenges created by the global pandemic.
India is now looking for ways to implement electronic bills of lading, electronic delivery orders, certificates of origin, letters of credit, and other trade documentation across all export-import transactions in India.
The Indian port community developed the Portall Infosystems in six months, which operates in 19 months, including India’s 13 major ports, and is connecting more than 16,000 corporate stakeholders. The B2B marketplace is integrated into the Indian Port Community System provdes a range of services, including blockchain document transfer.
It is further stated that the CargoX Platform for Blockchain Document Transfer (BDT) was successfully tested by Portall Infosystems and India’s global shipping stakeholders to transfer electronic bills of lading.
In the meantime, in efforts to comply with the Ministry’s initiative, Portall and CargoX engaged their partners to trial the CargoX Platform for EXIM with Indian companies.
Concluding, the ports that take part in the project deal with about 60% of India’s total cargo traffic. In 2019-2020, nearly 705 million tons of cargo was handled by these ports along with over 20,000 vessels.
