Fiata committed to “navigating uncertainty”
Published March 21, 2023 in Industry
The role of the freight forwarder in the supply chain is changing as quickly as the world itself. In Geneva, the traditional strategic ‘Fiata HQ Meeting’ of the year was introduced with a press conference hosted by president Ivan Petrov, director general Stéphane Graber and senior vice-president and working group sea chair Jens Roemer. “As the architects of the supply chain, we freight forwarders have to do our share to keep up the circulation of goods,” Petrov said. This also relates to the aims of World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA).
The Fiata organisation, which comprises 109 associations in 150 countries, representing about 40,000 freight forwarding and logistics firms, presented its aims for 2023. Director general Graber pointed out the current challenges. “Multimodal corridor optimisation is a major issue, considering a war at the gates of Europe, amongst other things.”
While digitisation, for example with the e-FBL, the support of the industry to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), vocational training, cybersecurity and safety remain major issues, senior vice-president Roemer had a word to say on sea transport’s situation. “Although worldwide congestion in ports and terminals seems to be going down, empty containers are now piling up. The free time for the return and pickup of containers should be increased. We’re also still witnessing a number of challenges, such as unfair demurrage and detention conditions, which are now receiving less attention.” There’s obviously still a long way to go to reach a fair sharing of costs between the stakeholders in the supply chain.
The Fiata HQ Meeting, which started in 18 March, will last till Tuesday, 21 March. (cd)
(Source: The ITJ, 21 March 2023)
