The international forum “Eurasian Week” organized by Eurasian Economic Commission took place from 22 to 24 October in Erevan, the capital of Armenia. It is worth noting, that the host country of the Forum becomes the Chairman of Eurasian Economic Community (EEC).

EEC economy digitalization became the main theme of the Forum. Among important questions which were discussed there were also problems of industrial and transport corridor digitalization, emergence of the unified EEC digital agenda, formation of the one-stop subcontracting platform, etc.

Russia Singapore Business Council was represented by the Director for Strategy and Development Andrei Bykov, who made two statements on October, 23. The first one with the presentation “RSTrade B2B International Information and Service Platform” took place at the Plenary “Subcontracting: Large, Medium and Small Business. Collaboration of Customers and Providers”, the second one – at the foresight session “EEC Digital Consortium – a Pool of Oppotrunities for High-Tech Business”. The theme of this statement was “Digital Business Cooperation with the Use of Eurasian Technology Transfer, Industrial Cooperation and Subcontracting Net as an Instrument of EEC and ASEAN Economical Integration”.

During the first session in which of the Council’s expert participated there was represented a concept of an initiative to create and improve Eurasian Technology Transfer, Industrial Cooperation and Subcontracting Net as an Instrument of EEC and ASEAN Economical Integration. The initiative was supported by Eurasion Econimic Comission. The Platform is going to become the basis for creating Eurasion Information System. RSTrade Platform operated by the Council executive structure “Russia Singapore Trade House” is one of the platforms, services of which are integrated into the new Eurasian Net. Services for foreign economic activities are going to be represented there. The Platform is also going to become a digital gateway connecting EEC and ASEAN enterprises. Population of EEC is cca 182 millions of people, and its aggregate GDP is the fourth in the world. Population of ASEAN is more than 630 millions of people, and this community is the third in the world according to its aggregate GDP and export and import development. Russia is the largest economy of these two macro-regions. It is also one of the ten world’s largest economies and one of the ten world’s most developed e-commerce markets. In 2017, the volume of e-trade amounted to 20 billion dollars.

At the foresight session special emphasis was placed on the problems of complementarity of EEC and ASEAN economies and on the role which consortiums play in the formation of electronic platforms and digital solutions. Andrei Bykov at his statement drove a theme of forming business development and infrastructure and of digitalization as a driver of this process, which was touched earlier by Koh Poh Koon, Minister of Trade and Industry of Republic of Singapore. Special attention was payed to the development of the integration between two platforms – Russian RSTrade and Singapore CamelOne driven by vCargo Cloud. In September Russian and Singapore companies signed the Memorandum of Cooperation, and the platforms are now working on the integration of various services, some of which are overlapping. The unique services will be simply used by the second part, and the overlapping will be mutually complemented with instruments and subservices. In particular, the Singapore side and all ASEAN companies through it will get an access to contract manufacturing, which grows faster than manufacturing in general. The Russian side and all EEC companies through it will get an access, for example, to the service which automates custom clearance process. Although the integration preparatory phase is going to be completed only in mid-November, all platform users in EEC and ASEAN already have an access to the services on both platforms.

There was also presented a project of the formation of Russian Hi-tech Companies Foreign Promotion and Investment Projects Representation Centre. This project was started in Singapore at the initiative of  the Council, and ASEAN partner companies showed interest in it. It was mentioned that EEC companies would be able to present here their products, services and technologies  and to create international cooperation groups.

Numerous meetings and negotiations during “Eurasian Week” showed that companies and countries are interested in the increase of economic integration within EEC. The development of public or publicly available digital services becomes one of the most efficient formats of such integration. The cooperation can reduce the time needed for the development of competitive products and services, the costs of promoting on foreign markets. It can also become a driver of economy growth for 5 countries and help to bring the digital economy to an advanced level. We are sure that instruments and services provided by the companies of Russia Singapore Business Council will be sought after and useful and that the international RSTrade Platform has already captured an important niche of digitalization of foreign economy activity services.