Global Financial Integrity (GFI) has announced the launch of GFTrade, its proprietary trade risk assessment application that enables banks, customs officials and other users to determine if goods are priced outside typical ranges for comparable products.

The non-profit organisation focused on illicit financial flows says its cloud-based system provides users with real-time price analyses for goods in the port or other inspection points using price ranges for the same product based on global trade information.

Mis-invoicing

According to GFI, this information can help to determine if further investigation into potential misinvoicing is warranted, and it has the potential to substantially increase domestic revenue collection.

The most recent estimate is that approximately US$875 billion in trade mis-invoicing occurred in 2013 alone according to GFI.

Bank utilisation

GFTrade can be utilised by banks providing trade financing, by insurance firms providing coverage to shipping firms, and by other users who need accurate trade pricing.

The backbone of the system is trade data from 30 of the world’s largest trading countries and the ability to search for goods values based on 80,000 Harmonised System codes. This data is updated automatically on a monthly basis, with only a two-to-three month time lag in data availability.

Official users

Customs offices or other entities that experience financial loss due to trade mis-invoicing and want to collect correct taxes and tariffs or to prevent trade-based money laundering can also use GFTrade.

Additional government users include finance or justice ministries, which could use the comparative trade data for price prediction and reporting or prosecution purposes.