(SINGAPORE) From next year, Singapore and five other members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping will start a new self-assessment scheme that will make it easier for traders to export their goods to other countries.

Tentatively called the Self-Certification Pathfinder, the initiative will give businesses the power to declare on their own that their goods are safe and approved for export to their free trade agreement (FTA) partners, thus eliminating the need to apply for clearance from their respective customs authorities.

The other five economies which have agreed to come on board are Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and South Korea, said Elizabeth Chelliah, who chairs the APEC Committee on Trade and Investment.

The importing country's customs authorities, meanwhile, will then recognise the company's endorsement and charge duty-free rates accordingly. However, they have the liberty to conduct their own investigations if they suspect the goods are illegal or do not meet the necessary requirements.

'The new scheme will benefit businesses because they will only need to prepare a standard set of documents and requirements,' said Ms Chelliah, who is also deputy director of the APEC division at Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry.

'It will be easier for them, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises that do not have the resources to look at customs issues.'

Talks are already underway to get more of the other APEC economies to adopt this self-certification scheme in the coming year, she added.

In her committee's report that is expected to be officially endorsed by the APEC trade ministers tomorrow, another key initiative will further discuss how the region can work towards a free trade area that will involve all 21 economies.

'There are still a lot of concerns at this point. APEC is a non-binding forum, so how do you achieve this goal? Is there a readymade FTA outside, of which APEC can be the mother ship? Many economies right now are still in analytical mode,' said Ms Chelliah.

The committee has since completed a mapping of all 42 regional FTAs that currently exist among all the APEC economies, to find some common ground or template in which an Asia-Pacific FTA can be best developed.

'If there is a lot of divergence, can we help the businesses untangle the spaghetti bowl of FTAs to make it easier to tap on these agreements? We want to find rules of origin to make things more business-friendly. The customs documentation can sometimes be very irksome and expensive,' said Ms Chelliah.

Separately, a new survey of 19 APEC economies last month has found that 12 of them saw an improvement in the trade finance situation since July.

Conducted by the Singapore government - which is chairing this year's APEC meetings - the survey is a follow-up from the first poll done in June this year. Then, only nine out of 18 economies surveyed felt that there was no trade finance problem, or that the issue was not a serious one.

'The increased risk aversion of financial institutions towards companies remains the most commonly cited reason for tightness in trade financing, but general liquidity shortage in the economy is now less of a problem compared to July,' said a statement issued by the chair of the APEC Senior Officials' Meeting.

The 12 out of 19 economies expressed optimism that the trade finance situation in APEC economies would ease over the next six months.

APEC's member economies are home to over 2.7 billion people and represent about 54 per cent of the world's gross domestic product and 44 per cent of world trade.