SUNS4516 Monday 27 September 1999

Geneva, Sep 23 (Someshwar Singh) -- With the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) outlining its 'Digital Agenda', and the World Trade Organization keen to break down all barriers to electronic commerce, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has gone a step further.

Last week, the ITU signed a Trust Fund partnership agreement with the World Trade Center Geneva and the World Internet Secure Key (WISeKey SA), which promotes the use of digital certificates for both authentication and authorization, 'in an unprecedented effort to open electronic commerce to developing nations.'

This Trust Fund partnership establishes a framework by which World Trade Center Geneva will assist the ITU in expanding the Electronic Commerce in Developing Countries project (EC-DC) using the World Trade Center network and its global infrastructure of more than 300 centres in more than 100 countries.

The use of EC-DC acronym will cause some confusion with the much older acronym ECDC (meaning economic cooperation among developing countries, which was never popular with the major developed
countries).

Under the agreement, a projected US$2.7 million will be channelled to the Fund every year for the next three years. The contributions will consist of donations from members of WTC Geneva and WISeKey S.A. as well as of a percentage of the share of certificate revenues from the International Secure Electronic Transaction Organization.

The funds are expected to cover the costs of experts made available to set up electronic commerce centres and implement e- commerce solutions in developing and least developed countries.

"The advent of the Internet has changed the way we communicate, conduct business, learn and entertain. But above all, it changed the way we shop and trade" said Yoshio Utsumi, the Secretary- General of the ITU, Mr Yoshio Utsumi.

"We must act swiftly and decisively to provide developing economies with the infocommunication infrastructure needed to join the digital economy if we do not want to create another form of development gap", Utsumi added.

The EC-DC project uses a distributed approach interconnecting countries via a secure E-Commerce Portal through their respective World Trade Centers and local banks. Countries lacking secure trusted infrastructures, digital certification and electronic payment facilities can therefore leapfrog the obstacle by using those of other project participants.
For many developing countries, this represents the only cost- effective way to access e-commerce. By pooling and sharing available resources, they can get conditions that become affordable. The purpose of the project is to build the basic capacity and, above all, the confidence of small and medium enterprises (SME) of developing countries in e-commerce and overcome the technical, financial and operational constraints which are often unsurmountable for most SME individually.

"One of the major obstacles which small and medium size businesses of developing countries face today is not only the risk level in dealing and trading on the Net but perhaps more so the complexity of setting e-commerce services in countries which often lack basic components", said Hamadoun Tour‚, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau.

"Through this agreement, SME of developing countries who do not have established e-commerce base will be able to get "off-the- shelf tool kits" that offer easy-to-use pre-packaged e-commerce solutions through a one-stop shop while using existing networks" Tour‚ added.

In developing countries, SME are often not connected, especially to advanced technologies. In addition, banking services are often not extensive and financial services network infrastructure which plays the essential role of intermediary between the seller and the buyer (banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions) is frequently not interconnected to the communications and data processing web underlying virtually every deal.

Without such initiatives, many countries would stay on the exit ramp of the global information superhighways now being deployed in most developed nations. It is important to break down the barriers that would otherwise prevent developing countries from embarking on e-commerce projects because of the prohibitive costs of seeking commercial solutions on a one-to-one basis.

The costs of building basic e-commerce capability on one's own Web site with catalogue, shopping baskets and transaction facilities is estimated to be around 100 000 US$ - a severe deterrent for most SME of developing countries which have very small trade volume.

"WTC Geneva is very pleased to be associated with the ITU in setting up e-commerce capabilities in developing countries" said Philippe Doubre, Secretary General of World Trade Center Geneva. "With its global network of WTC already offering real business transactions, developing countries will be able to gain access to complete e-commerce solutions rapidly and easily. This form of partnership could well become a model for a WTC e-commerce network." Doubre also said.

The Trust Fund agreement follows an earlier agreement signed on 17 May 1999 to facilitate the deployment of a Global Electronic Commerce Network interconnecting Electronic Commerce Centres of Excellence via a Global Electronic Commerce Portal operated by WISeKey in cooperation with World Trade Center Network.

The e-commerce solutions proposed by the WTC will make use of relevant ITU standards whenever available.