The ASEAN Federation of Forwarders’ Association (AFFA) has just held its 32nd congress from December 9 to 11, in Vientiane, Laos. The congress has decided Chua Seng Wah from Malaysian Forwarders’ Association as the new AFFA Chairman, to replace Yukki Nugrahawan Hanafi from Indonesian Logistics and Forwarders’ Association (ILFA/ALFI). The congress also decided Yukki Nugrahawan Hanafi to become AFFA Head of the Advisory Board.
The congress was officially opened by the Lao Minister of Transport H.E.Viengsavath Siphandone.
On his remark speech for the congress Yukki explained that AFFA was very happy to be part of the development of the ASEAN Region in serving the logistics sector to ensure the fast move of goods within the regions.
He explained AFFA Conference and 32nd AFFA AGM is held refer to the constitution of AFFA once a year. “Therefore, we see this meeting as much important for all members. By this meeting, we can continue our plan to cooperate more and accelerate business development by taking more real actions especially in creating suitable framework of cooperation between all of us on Freight Forwarding and Logistics industry,” he said in his remark speech.
AFFA Conference and 32nd AFFA AGM took the theme of “Boosting Economics and Logistics Industry within ASEAN and ASIA Region in post Pandemic Era Through Transformation”.
“We have certain reason to choose Vientiane, Lao PDR as the host. Lao PDR has started to be the pioneer in connecting with the broader region, especially China through the Thanalaeng Dry Port. This is a good reason to fasten the good movement in the routes,” he said further.
Freight Forwarding and logistics business, according to Yukki, were recently facing uneasy situation with the turbulence of business pattern in the entire world caused by Covid-19 pandemic. “By improving and developing our cooperation, improving capacity through transformation, we can together have the high ability to overcome the business uncertainty caused by this Covid-19 outbreak, which frankly speaking that won’t be easy for all of us.”
He warned that the pandemic Covid-19 has not end, requiring tight cooperation to overcome the impacts. The low international demands in goods, container issues, and the rate turbulence from very high freight rates during pandemic to the very low prices now are among other issues needed solution.
He also calls AFFA members and their global partner especially within ASIAN countries to grow together, noting one important thing to ensure this cooperation and collaboration would run smoothly. “We need to develop the good cooperation on capacity building and IT connectivity. We all understand that human resources and appliance of IT connectivity become the most important dimension for the success of our services. Those are the transformation we should do together.”
AFFA, he said, needed to go forward to actualize the larger cooperation between ASEAN Secretariat and AFFA including all the member countries in trade facilitation and supporting the RCEP in wider region. “We realize that logistics and forwarding industry has the great opportunities and chance to develop in upcoming years, beside we also realize that the challenge would not be easy to face.”
The transformation of the business, the mutual collaboration between members and global partners especially within ASIAN countries, the excellent capacity building and understanding the era of digitalization will much help the appliance of all initiatives in the logistics and transport sector that has been honored by ASEAN Secretariat.
Together with ASEAN Secretariat, AFFA will be more active in the future concerning the ASEAN Trade Facilitation. The initiatives of AFAMT, AFAFGIT, ACTS are most important to ensure the fast and save moving of goods between countries within ASEAN. Including ASEAN Authorized Economics Operators Mutual Recognition Agreement (AAMRA), where AFFA members need to improve their capacities.
“Finally, this is going to be my end of 6 years chairmanship. Continuing the cooperation and collaboration in more real actions, we do hope that AFFA in the future, can together build a strong business partnership, do updated transformation and also having a fruitful business collaboration in the future. Thank you and I do hope that all of us can conclude the productive outcome from this AFFA Conference and 32nd AFFA AGM,” he said.