What is FIATA?
FIATA is the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations, which is a non-governmental and membership-based organisation that represents freight forwarders in over 150 countries. FIATA has 113 Association Members and over 5000 individual members, in which it represents an industry that has over 40,000 freight forwarding and logistics firms all over the world.
FIATA works globally to represent service providers operating in logistics and supply chain management. FIATA promotes facilitation and best practices in the freight forwarding community through documents and forms, congress, training, and publications.
FIATA actively engages with the World Trade Organization, United Nations agencies and other worldwide organisations, transport organisations, global partners, and governments to represent its members, and promote and protect the interest of the freight forwarding industry.
What Are the Objectives of FIATA?
FIATA has five principles that it follows:
- To bring together and unite the international freight forwarding industry.
- To protect, promote, and represent the freight forwarding industry’s interests by acting as advisors and experts in meetings with international bodies dealing with global transportation.
- To familiarise the freight forwarding industry and the public with the services it provides, through broadcasting and distributing information.
- To standardise and enhance the quality of services the industry provides. FIATA does this by promoting and developing standardised trading conditions and forwarding documents.
- To help with and assist vocational training and education for freight forwarders, as well as helping with liability insurance issues. FIATA also provides tools for eCommerce, such as electronic data interchange (EDI) and barcodes.
FIATA Membership
FIATA has different membership categories:
Association Members
Association Members are organisations that represent the whole freight forwarding industry in a territory. Association Members have the right to present motions, nominations and voting rights.
Individual Members
Individual Members are freight forwarding and logistics businesses, and legal companies that are closely associated with the forwarding and logistics branch.
Group Members
Group Members include international companies that represent the forwarding branch of several countries, they can also include global forwarding groups that represent the same or similar interests to FIATA. Group Members can additionally be international associations whose members are only active in a certain sector of the forwarding branch.
Honorary Members
Honorary Members involve people that have been of a particular service to FIATA or the freight forwarding industry.
