Asia Economic Dialogue 2020

09.30 – 11.00|Session -1 | WTO Reforms

Session Brief: The global trading system – with WTO at its heart – is facing a very challenging moment. Some major functions of WTO like administering multilateral trade rules, serving as a forum for trade negotiations and providing a mechanism to settle trade disputes are under pressure and needs reform. Moreover some new issues like Agreement on Investment, E-commerce negotiations, Agreement on gender issues, Trade facilitation agreement on services, Information Technology Agreement also need to be addressed in the present global trade scenario. Mounting business concerns about economic slowdown across Asia, and signs of slippage towards a global recession has been caused in general terms by rising  protectionism, increased public scepticism about the merits of trade liberalization, and doubts about the benefits of globalization, and in particular terms by US-China trade war. All of these stress the need of reforming the trade rules. So a new WTO should usher in without diluting the basic principles of consensus based decision making and concerns of all the member countries should be accommodated accordingly.

11.30 – 13.00| Session-2| Global Value Chain

Session Brief: The term “global value chains” (GVCs) has been used to describe the sequence of all functional activities required in the process of value creation involving more than one country. Multinational firms exploit differences in comparative advantages across countries and allocate production to where it is most efficient. As a result GVCs have led to a redistribution of economic activity towards emerging countries, offering new opportunities for economic development for both large and small firms. The role of GVCs has recently become an important topic due to the increased fragmentation of production across countries and industries. Multi-country input-output tables (MIOTs) have been extensively used to measure the significance of GVCs . Asian  countries have embraced GVCs, increasing their involvement as both buyers of foreign value added to produce exports (backward GVC participation) and sellers into the production of exports of other countries (forward GVC participation). Ultimately, the gains from participation in GVCs depend on factors of competitiveness, market power and distribution of value captured. In this scenario, value chain promotion entails a new set of measures, focusing specifically on inclusion and value capture when imk2proving the position of domestic production in global value chains. Many of these measures are geared towards supporting developing countries participating in GVCs.

14.00 – 15.30| Session-3| Greater Participation of Developing Countries (DCs)

Session Brief: International trade is an engine for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction. Therefore no country should be left behind and especially the developing countries should get the level playing field to trade according to their comparative advantage. Asia is made up of economies at very different stages of development: very advanced economies like Japan, large emerging economies such as China and India, and other emerging economies which still have huge catch-up potential. Though Asia’s  growth path has been characterized by continual lowering of trade and investment barriers and more opening up, resulting in benefit from technological catch-up, still k2various intra regional, interregional and international trade barriers exist which has adverse effect on trade volume of the region as a whole and trading prospects of developing countries in particular. Therefore the challenges faced by developing countries need to be addressed at the policy level to boost the trade opportunities of developing countries which  will in turn increase the global welfare.

16.30 – 18.00 | Session-5 | Open Regionalism

Session Brief: Open Regionalism seeks to assure that regional agreements (i,e regional trading blocs) should in practice be building blocks for further global liberalization rather than stumbling blocks that deter such progress. Economic integration is already under way in Asia, albeit to a different extent in each sub-regions. Trade is the primary driver of integration, particularly in East Asia and South-East Asia. In Asia FTA (Free Trade agreements), bilateral and regional negotiations have developed quickly in the past decade moving Asia ever closer to an economic union. The one trade bloc which is more active than any other trade bloc in Asia is the ASEAN. In the year 2017, the intra-ASEAN trade in goods was US$590.4bn and its trade with rest of the world was US$532.1bn (ASEAN Stats, 2018). Therefore open regionalism as a concept should be viewed as a continuous process to make globalization and formation of trading blocs not as mutually exclusive but  a complementary process.

09.30 – 10.30| Session-1| Financial Innovations from Asia & Africa

Session Brief: Financial innovation has been defined as both the “technological advances which facilitate access to information, trading and means of payment, and … the emergence of new financial instruments and services, new forms of organization and more developed and complete financial markets. Penetration of financial technological companies are having different impacts on the traditional financial sectors of Asia and Africa. In India, building on the backbone of UIDAI and affordable and accessible data, initiatives like IMPS, BharatQR, UPI, Ru-Pay that have captured the imagination as well as market share of payment transactions in India. In Africa, m-PESA is revolutionising the way payments are being handled. And while the financial technology sector is experiencing explosive growth in Asia and Africa, still more than half of the world’s unbanked live in Asia, and many more live in populous African countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia and a lot more needs to be done, including learning from initiatives above.

10.30 – 11.30| Session-2| Pole-vaulting Technologies

Session Brief: Leapfrogging means jumping to safety, while pole-vaulting means exceeding the bar through daring innovation. Today’s global society must pole-vault to sustainable development, that is, to a world that is prosperous, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable. This path, of course, has huge challenges, risks, but is immensely rewarding. This session looks at some of the most path-breaking technology innovations that have come through from Asia in the field of space technology, data science, mobility, and information technology that have the potential to create a new age of shared prosperity in a sustainable manner