The prevailing development paradigm for the last few decades has been that trade and investment are indispensable drivers of growth and inextricably linked to productive capacity growth in developing countries. Increasing participation in global value chains has been a key goal of development strategies and industrial policies in most developing countries.
But international investment and trade are changing. They are still closely connected; some 80% of global trade takes place within the international production networks of multinationals – the main actors in the global FDI landscape. But global flows of capital, goods, services and technology are increasingly intangible.
For more than a decade now, global FDI has been relatively stagnant, trade in goods has grown slightly more, trade in services much more, and cross-border payments for intellectual property much much more. And flows of data a multiple of that. What does this mean for development?
In today’s world, marked by multiple contemporaneous crises that slow down investment, frequent supply chain shocks that hinder trade, and political fragmentation that is causing a rethink in both, how should developing country policymakers look at the role of trade and investment in their growth strategies?
Session themes:
- How has the role of international trade and investment in development and industrial strategies changed over the past decade?
- How can countries that are on the first few rungs of the GVC development ladder still reap the benefits of export-led and investment-driven growth?
- What are the implications of the polycrisis, the need for more supply chain resilience, and political fragmentation for trade and investment policies, especially in developing countries?
- How can international organizations such as UNCTAD and the WTO assist developing economies with these challenges?
Speaker(s)
