Maritime Trade : SMEs Schooled on Digitalisation, Information Sharing

Business people from Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Douala have been told that there is need to share and mutualise information and the information systems that is managing ports (seaports) activities. This was the main message from actors in ports management during a talk by the Cameroon business cartel, GICAM, at its headquarters in Bonanjo, Douala, on April 22, 2022. The objective of the talk was to raise awareness among Small and Medium-sized Enterprises on the importance of digitalising and sharing information in relation to ports activities.
Speaking on the importance of mutualisation of information systems, the main speakers at the talk were Jean Marcel Belinga Belinga, Director of Information Systems of the Autonomous Port of Kribi, Abdoullahi Faouzi, Technical Director of the Single Window for Foreign Trade Operations (GUCE) and Pierre Kam, Secretary General of the Professional Association of Credit Institutions of Cameroon (APECCAM) corroborated each other on the fact that the seaport is a kind of community having together systems that are communicating in exchanging information.
There is a need for SMEs to share and mutualise information with customs brokers, customs, administration, logistics actors, among others, with whom they interact, so that actors of the international supply chain get the right information at the right time in order to access the procedure that are related to their activity. When it comes to the import declaration, such a document is required at the Central level of procedures, for example, customs declaration. If there is no communication between the t...