Dubai has launched a loyalty scheme for shippers and freight forwarders in a bid to capture premium “south-south” transhipment cargo from hubs in Europe.
The World Logistics Passport (WLP) is an initiative from Dubai’s Customs World, with the support of DP World, Emirates and Dnata. Mr Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, group chairman and chief executive of DP World, said it incentivised companies and traders to use Dubai’s world class multimodal facilities in return for cost and time savings and enhanced Customs clearance. It also increased the ease of moving goods in Dubai and would foster more optimal direct trade routes between Latin America, Africa and Asia than going via Europe.
Trade between emerging markets in the southern regions is expected to represent 30% of global trade by 2030, up from 25%, Mr Sulayem added, noting that south-south trade represented more than half of all developing economies’ exports in 2018. But he added, unlocking further growth in trade in these emerging markets, and the economic development that came with it, depended on overcoming the non-tariff barriers that limit growth, such as logistics inefficiency.
The WLP was officially launched at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos. The initial goal of WLP is to target premium air cargo that is usually transhipped in Europe, including flowers, perishables, electronics and precious .Instead of traffic going from Mexico to Frankfurt to Senegal, the plan is to have the same traffic use Dubai as a hub and save four to nine hours on the same trip to Europe.
Freight forwarders must meet certain criteria to qualify for the WLP, eligibility based largely on trade value measured by cost, insurance and freight (CIF) declarations. Initially the low-weight high-value operators and routes will be exploited leading later to higher weights.
Source : Various Agencies