The Chilean Finance Minister, Felipe Larraín, announced March 14, 2012 the award of tender of the Integrated Foreign Trade System (SICEX) to the CrimsonLogic-Everis consortium with the goal of developing the design, implementation, and start of SICEX, within the framework of a project financed by the IDB.
The CrimsonLogic-Everis Consortium, made up of Everis España S.L.U., Everis Chile S.A. and CrimsonLogic Panama, has already set a schedule for the project, with the start of implementation set for the last quarter of 2012. The project is estimated to last 31 months until its completion.
International trade single windows help speed up export, import, and goods transit operations, reducing the time and costs of these processes according to international standards, recommendations, and good practices, and making intensive use of information technologies.
In Chile, SICEX seeks to cut by half the time needed for export or import processes, which currently takes an average of 21 days.
“Today is a very important day for the modernization of the Chilean state since we are awarding a tender that with time will allow the country to fully implement an international trade single window”, asserted Finance Minister Felipe Larraín.
According to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2012 report, in Chile 21 days are needed for these operations and up to 19 state agencies are involved, while the average for Latin America and the Caribbean and the OECD stands at 18 and a mere 10.9 days, respectively. Reducing the time for paperwork from 21 to 11 days could imply additional exports worth some USD 8.01 billion.
Eight world-class companies and consortia participated in the international public tender process, all with extensive experience in the construction and operation of international trade single windows in the world.
Bearing in mind that the main goal of this single window is the interoperability with other countries, in its high-level design SICEX has incorporated the adoption of and the standardization and harmonization with international standards such as those from the World Customs Organization (WCO), document and electronic government standards of the State of Chile, ISO product and country codifications, and international technological standards.