

The Central Asia Gateway: Helping small businesses navigate trade corridors
From leather goods to ceramics, from herbal teas to handmade pillows, small businesses throughout Central Asia are increasingly looking to get their products to markets, particularly in neighbouring countries.
One of the biggest challenges they face, however, emerges when it comes time to fill out the right paperwork, and getting it to the right place and on time.
Exporting and importing, even to buyers and consumers in countries next door, can often require several steps and formalities, which require time that small businesses rarely have. Even when this information exists, it can often be spread out over several websites and in different languages.
A new online platform is changing all that. Known as the Central Asia Gateway, it builds on a state-of-the-art methodology that ITC and UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) have honed over more than a decade, consolidating information on over 300 trade flows which reflect the goods that the region’s small businesses trade most. Users can visit the website and easily see a step by-step overview of what import and export procedures look like along trade corridors by both country and product, from beans and bottled water to flour and footwear.
The gateway pools this information from the National Trade Facilitation Portals of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which all played an active role in making this online resource come to life. It is also a contribution towards helping the region realize the objectives of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade Facilitation: namely, to cut red tape at the border and ease trading processes, including through better, verifiable, and accessible information.
Having this region-wide portal is saving exporters and importers alike valuable time, said Larisa Kislyakova, Head of the Central Asia Transport and Logistics Association. Users tell Larisa that the portal ‘is very important and very flexible in their work,’ giving them the chance to make course corrections throughout the trading process.
The time that small businesses save has translated to far lower costs: for instance, current estimates suggest that the costs of cross-border trade have already gone down by $1 million for the Tajik business community as a whole.
The gateway is continually being updated to reflect the latest information and additional trade flows and has drawn public praise from local policymakers and the international community. In 2023, it was awarded the title of ‘Best Trade Information Portal’ at the World Investment Forum hosted by UN Trade and Development in Abu Dhabi. To date, the Gateway has attracted 225,000 users and counting, who can access the information in English, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian, Tajik, Turkmen, or Uzbek. Having this information in one place has also helped inform new initiatives to help streamline cross-border trade processes where possible and digitize key steps.
The gateway is about more than information gathering: it includes a Trade Facilitation Index so local institutions can share their best trade facilitation practices, monitor how these efforts are playing out, and more. Another key component is a ‘corridor view’ for users wishing to see how trade corridors work within the region and what this entails.
The EU-funded Ready4Trade Central Asia project, of which the gateway is a major component, also features other critical pillars: from training women so they are better positioned to undertake trade and customs careers, to connecting artisans and craftspeople with virtual marketplaces to sell online. As ITC continues its engagement in Central Asia, this big-picture approach is key to ensuring that the region’s small businesses are in the best position to compete, and in turn give back to their communities.