JOHANNESBURG, May 21 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 will slow global trade but presents an opportunity for trade digitalization, said Standard Bank's Head of Global Trade Vinod Madhavan on Thursday.
Madhavan said the COVID-19 outbreak will have significant negative impact on trade growth as countries limit physical movement to curb the virus spread. However, artificial intelligence, block chain, cloud computing and data analytics of disruptive technologies could provide a solution to facilitate trade.
Madhavan believed some digital solutions could be used to replace the current situation where trade is reduced by COVID-19 with limited physical human interaction.
"It is hoped that by leveraging basics such as digitized signatures and documents and technological innovations such as data analytics, AI and automation to change and improve the way local and international trade is done today, we can reduce friction in the trade process, boost activity and through doing so, help to reduce the impact from reduced global trade," he said.
If AI is combined with optical character recognition, it could increase operational efficiencies to the areas of manual document sorting and data entry to reduce the manual nature of trade processes, Madhavan said.
He pointed out that this requires collaboration between governments and industries to remove barriers by amending and aligning regulatory frameworks. Enditem
