The government of Brazil through the Secretariat of Federal Revenue was reported that during the first quarter of 2020 will start to run the registry of foreign trade based on a blockchain.The local authorities noted that, after conducting technical meetings with the teams of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay (Mercosur), was established with the start of operations for information sharing between customs.Sergio Alencar, tax auditor of the Federal Revenue, he pointed out that the project includes several stages and that one of them is to automatically identify the firms that are certified as Authorized Economic Operator (aeo) in their respective countries. The official said the following about the implementation of the plan:“To facilitate trade and the entry of certified companies, we have to understand the business from both sides. For example, Brazil has an agreement with Uruguay, and Uruguay send us a list of companies and (us) send to you our list of companies. It turns out that to make this exchange of information by email is not appropriate because it requires previous definitions: what is information exchange? In what format?”.To lighten the process, the secretariat will implement a solution called bConnect, which is developed over the Hyperledger Fabric 1.4. The programming was in charge of the company Serpro, which handles the technological infrastructure of the public sector in this country.There are three aspects that will be evaluated by the authorities with the implementation: the first is the security of the information so that it is not altered, the second is to ensure the identity of the person who is feeding the platform and third consider the cost of the project.In may of this year, it was reported that Brazil was already working on this project, although no set dates, no working meetings with the engineers of the countries of the Mercosur. Now, after conducting meetings in June and December, we established a plan to activate the platform at the beginning of next year.
Use cases
The proposal of Brazil to apply the technology of accounting distributed (DLT) or blockchain to your records of foreign trade and customs, is not the first of its kind. In November 2016 it is reported that the united States was considering a pilot plan to use a blockchain in their customs services.On that occasion, discussed the possibility of applying this type of decentralized database for the delivery of permits, licenses, and certificates; the tracing of products and verification of their components and origin, among others.In Spain have also been reported cases of the use of blockchains to the logistics of the port of Valencia. In this case it is a solution of the companies IBM and Maersk. More recently, in August of this year, the port of Veracruz, Mexico, began tests with a blockchain for their export activities.Blockchain or ledger distributed is an original technology of Bitcoin as a digital system in which two or more participants can perform any type of transaction without the participation of intermediaries or trusted third parties via the internet. This is an encrypted system that protects the data of the operations.