FIATA is the world's largest organisations representing the global logistics and transportation industry. It has over 125 member countries and represents around 50,000 logistic companies employing approx 10 million people across 150 countries.

Babar Badat, a Pakistani, was elected as the organizations global President in 2017 for a two-year term and he followed a President elected from China and an earlier one from Italy.

In the FIATA World Congress 2019 being held earlier this week in Cape Town, the organization has elected a new President this time, from South Africa. During his tenure Badat worked on the reconstruction of the organization most notably he proposed a motion to move the organization's headquarters from Zurich to Geneva. Although similarly made resolutions in recent years, to move out of Zurich, did not get approved, Badat's motions met overwhelming approval i.e. a motion to move the headquarter to Geneva and a motion to create the FIATA Logistics Institute, both met with overwhelming success. Badat said "to move the seat of a 100-year old European organization is not an easy task and it took a lot of work" but he was very thankful for the support he got from the global membership of the organization. He said advocacy is a very important part of the organization's work and what better place for that than Geneva, which is truly an international hub for multilateral organizations. He said "for advocacy it's better to be across the street than across the country."

FIATA will launch its debut in Geneva in the upcoming spring. The FIATA logistic institute in another important decision merges all of FIATA's Training institutions under one institute.

FIATA represents the international freight logistics industry with government authorities & organizations across the world as well as at the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), International Road Transport Union (IRU), International Air Transport Association (IATA), and International Union of Railways (UIC) and it engages regularly in the development of the international logistics sector. FIATA has consultative status with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and Economic & Social Council of United Nation (ECOSOC as well as ECE, ESCAP, ESCWA etc.-PR

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019