Bringing goods, materials or equipment in from outside the country — whether from a free zone or straight from an international market — and pushing it through customs and its rules: that is importation in practice, and it sits at the centre of a trading relationship between countries that the modern world genuinely cannot function without. No country, advanced or developing, can really separate its economy from the rest of the world. Foreign trade opens real opportunities for building trade blocs and, at times, monopolies; moving productive factors across borders can be straightforward in some cases and genuinely difficult in others; and the systems and legislation that regulate international trade are, more often than not, quite different from what governs trade inside a single country.

Because foreign trade carries that much weight, Arab British Fellowship Training Academy put together this foundations course in international import and export, for anyone looking to build a solid base in international trade.

What you'll walk away with from this course:

• How trade theory developed over time, and how import and export operations themselves evolved.
• The concept of foreign trade policy, and the tension between protectionist mechanisms and free trade — plus why import and export operations happen across continents in the first place, and what alternatives exist for sourcing a given good.
• The essential basics of import and export, including how to set up an import-export office, how to pick a product worth importing or exporting, and how to actually reach suppliers and customers.
• The payment and transfer methods used when handling international transactions.

Who should attend:

• Those planning to work in import and export.
• Students of commercial colleges and institutes, and business administration programmes.
• Anyone interested in e-commerce.
• Investors, office owners and capitalists.

Module 1: International Trade — Definition, Development and Why It Matters

• How international and foreign trade are defined, and how they have developed over time.
• Why international trade matters.

Module 2: International Trade Policy and the Reasons Behind It

• The fundamentals of international trade policy.
• The underlying reasons international trade takes place.

Module 3: Import Operations — Objectives and Practical Steps

• The objectives behind import operations.
• The practical steps a typical import operation follows.