(Nikkei BP Group)
(No.1 High-Tech News Site in Japanese)
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| Mitsubishi, Others Work on Foreign Trade Guidelines
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January 19, 1999 (TOKYO) -- Mitsubishi Corp. and five other companies
said they will cooperate on guidelines to computerize foreign trade
financial transactions.
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The project is designed to realize electronic data interchange (EDI)
in the field of foreign trade financial transactions. The guidelines
are scheduled to be worked out by the end of March 1999.
The five other companies managing the project are: Mitsui & Co., Ltd.,
IBM Japan Ltd., NTT Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and Fujitsu Ltd. In addition
to the six companies, 23 companies will participate through user groups
affiliated with the shipping, banking, insurance and transportation
industries.
Foreign trade procedures are currently carried out by means of written
documents among shippers, financial institutions, transportation companies
and government agencies. Such documents require changing information
to another document format. However, there is little difference among
documents in their information content, according to a spokesman for
Mitsubishi.
It is expected that EDI will increase the efficiency of foreign trade
financial transactions.
Guidelines on business boundary, active rules, certified functions and
protocols to be applied will be worked out by the end of March.
Although the guidelines will be limited to foreign trade procedures inside
Japan, they could be easily be applied to EDI systems abroad once domestic
procedures are computerized, according to the Mitsubishi spokesman.
After the guidelines are worked out, they will be made public by the
Electronic
Commerce Promotion Council of Japan, an organization promoting electronic
data interchange, and applied to transactions by connecting to EDI systems
abroad.
The project to lay down the guidelines is subsidized by the first supplementary
budget of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry for fiscal
year 1998. The six companies applied for the budget and have been granted
the subsidy.
Related story: Mitsui, Hitachi, Five Banks to Join Bolero Project
(BizTech News Dept.)
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