New Delhi, May 30: The Commonwealth countries are planning a business travel card that will allow business leaders from the 52-member club seamless travel without a visa within their territories.

The Commonwealth is also considering a business-to-business portal especially for small- and medium-entities that will facilitate interactions in a bid to raise the trade within the member countries to $1 trillion from $750 million now.

"I have proposed that the Commonwealth set up an e-commerce platform which lists firms by sectors to promote intra-commonwealth trade," said Usha Dwarka-Canabady, foreign secretary of Mauritius, here to attend the first India-Commonwealth SME Trade Summit. The Commonwealth countries collectively exported and imported goods and services worth $4.3 trillion in 2015. However, intra-Commonwealth trade amounts to only 17 per cent of the total trade.

A Ficci-IIFT study on e-commerce in retail exports, released today, has pointed to great potential for Indian medium and small businesses. The study estimates the potential of trade through the online channel at more than $300 billion, though actual sales have just been $52 billion.

The SME summit also wants to take a proposal to the next Commonwealth Heads of Governments (CHOGM) meet in Vanuatu later this year for a Commonwealth Business Travel Card similar to that used across the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum. Businessmen proposed by their respective national trade chambers and vetted by the Commonwealth secretariat can travel visa-less across the grouping with this proposed travel card.

Rashmi Banga, head of trade competitiveness with the Commonwealth secretariat, said: "We are contemplating this and after adoption it will be taken up by CHOGM."

Banga and her colleagues at the secretariat have also done a study on "India's Global Value Chains: Linking less developed countries". The study has identified export opportunities for Indian products in 50 markets, including the US, EU, UK, RCEP countries, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana and South Africa. The study identified 20 least developed countries and three South Asian countries which can link into India's global value chains.