Uniquely identifying locations in trade, transport and regulatory documents is vital to the smooth functioning of international trade. For over thirty years, this has been possible thanks to a five-character reference known as UN/LOCODE, which provides a coded representation for the names of ports, airports, inland clearance depots, inland freight terminals and other transport related locations which are used for goods movements associated with trade.
This free service covers almost all locations related to international trade in the four corners of the globe and is estimated to be used almost 1.5 billion times every year.
The rising number of codes and the volume of maintenance requests for the use of the code has instigated UNECE to install a network of focal points in each economy. However, this has proven to be insufficient, pushing the secretariat to explore future pricing models for this essential service.
UN/LOCODE stakeholders will gather in Geneva, Switzerland, on 30 November 30 and 1 December 2017 for the UN/LOCODE Advisory Group Launch Meeting, the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) announced today.
The UN/LOCODE Advisory Group will be tasked to deal with the main issues related to UN/LOCODE maintenance and development. Its Mandate and Terms of Reference (ECE/TRADE/C/CEFACT/2017/17) were approved by the UNECE Executive Committee (EXCOM).
The Advisory Group is open to all interested parties from both the public and private sectors and will study these points as well as a possible revision of UN Recommendation 16 on Code for Trade and Transport Locations, a re-engineering of the repository system and other important maintenance and development issues.
UNECE welcomes all stakeholders to participate in this important milestone in the UN/LOCODE history and take this unique opportunity to be involved from day one in assisting to set the stage for future activities.
For further details on this event, please visit http://www.unece.org/index.php?id=46323, where all available documents can be downloaded.