New Digital Tools to Help UK Businesses Trade Overseas

New Digital Tools to Help UK Businesses Trade Overseas

Two new digital trading tools, to be launched on GOV.UK, will help businesses find up-to-date, product and country-specific information to trade with more than 160 countries.

The free tools are designed to be quick and easy to use and provide exporting businesses with all the information needed in one place.

The ‘Check How to Export Goods’ tool will provide UK businesses with guidance on exporting goods to countries around the world. By using this tool, they will be able to find detailed information on export-related topics, including duties and customs procedures.

The ‘Trade with the UK’ tool will provide information on tariffs, taxes and rules amongst other topics for overseas businesses exporting goods to the UK.

The new tools are part of the Government’s support of British businesses – both those who export and those who could export – to tap into their exporting potential as the UK becomes an independent trading nation.

Today we stand on the cusp of a new era in British trade. UK businesses trading with the world will be the bedrock of our future prosperity. We will negotiate free trade deals that empower businesses and make trade freer and fairer for all. We will showcase our world-class goods and services and welcome inward investors. Britain is back and is ready to trade.

 

– International Trade Secretary Elizabeth Truss

As we wrote earlier, a fifth of all UK registered businesses tell us that they have never exported, despite believing that they have goods or services which would sell overseas. This translates to more than 400,000 UK businesses who could be exporting but are not.

Yet, all of the UK nations have now recorded at least 3 consecutive financial years of goods export growth, illustrating the consistency of the success of exporters up and down the country.

On February 1, the Department for International Trade launched a new Ready to Trade international marketing campaign to inspire and reassure buyers and inward investors worldwide that the UK is ready, willing and able to trade with them. Billboard, newspaper and social-media adverts have appeared in signature locations across 18 cities, 13 countries and airports around the world.

Government International Trade Advisers from across the country will join the Export Hub facility in February and March in towns and cities across the UK—from the NEC in Birmingham to the Subsea Expo in Aberdeen—to encourage businesses to export.

Image: Tom Fisk

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