“Single Window is defined as a facility that allows parties involved in trade and transport to lodge standardized information and documents with a single entry point to fulfil all import, export, and transit-related regulatory requirements”
UN/CEFACT RECOMMENDATION No. 33
The main objective of trade facilitation, as we know, is the streamlining of procedures, elimination of unnecessary bureaucratic and administrative burdens. In case of successful implementation, trade facilitation may become an important factor for the development of any state. Today, perhaps, it has become an indisputable fundamental truth.
It is also clear there is a certain gap between the need to facilitate and implemented facilitation. A growing number of world states have successfully overcome this gap, but, as evidenced by international experience, this path is different for everybody. And last but not least reason is the choice of an appropriate instrument to achieve the set goals.
Ukraine is not an exception to this rule.
The need really exists. Today, in the perspective of Ukraine's integration into European and world markets, this need becomes even more important.
We have some progress already. However, we must acknowledge that the actual facilitation is not as fast as we wanted. The reason partly is the lack of coherence between the trade community and government agencies in the promotion of individual innovations, driven by both of them.
The "Single Window - Local Solution" for Ukraine is also an innovation. Not being an end in itself, "Single Window - Local Solution" is regarded as a project designed to link other projects at various stages of implementation, which are summarized below.
The commitment to contribute to the existing transit potential in Ukraine, taking into account the growing need of the international trade to develop intermodal transport and expand transport corridors, allowed for a fresh look at the trade facilitation.
The aim of Single Window - Local Solution is, above all, to create favorable conditions for international transport of goods through the territory of Ukraine. This goal, involves searching and finding common solutions to problems relating to different areas of activity: (1) eliminating cross-border obstacles to intermodal traffic, and (2) the introduction of best practices of intermodal transport. Applied problems, the solution of which should contribute to the Single Window - Local solution, lie in filling the gaps in the existing procedures for the regulation of changing modes and, simultaneously, to mitigate over-regulation of border crossing procedures.
The adoption of the new Customs Code of Ukraine confirms that there
