WORLD TRADE

World Trade

World merchandise exports have more than tripled over the last two decades and reached US$18 trillion (in current prices) in 2012, with a quarter of that trade comprising exports among developing countries - so-called "South-South" trade -- which reached a record $4.7 trillion, according to the UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics 2013.
Total developing economies' exports now account for 45 per cent of the world total, with half of the increase in global exports between 1995 and 2012 accounted for by developing countries.
The share of South-South trade in total world exports has doubled over the last 20 years, to over 25 per cent. Fuels and manufactured goods now account for roughly 25 per cent and 58 per cent of South-South trade, respectively.
The Handbook helps to document that the South-South trend has been led by developing Asia, followed by developing America. Intra-regional trade within developing Asia amounted to $3.5 trillion in 2012. The Handbook also reports that the growth of the South-South commerce was higher in developing Africa between 1995 and 2012 than in the developing regions of Asia and America. Moreover, South-South trade from least developed countries (LDCs) in Africa climbed significantly in value over the figure for 1995. African LDCs have increasingly benefited from commercial exchanges with developing Asia.
China's exports to other developing countries, recorded at $1 trillion last year, alone represent more than 20 per cent of developing countries' intra-trade. Apart from China and major petroleum and gas exporters, Viet Nam, Egypt, India, Turkey, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile are among the economies that have expanded the most in the South-South trade during last two decades.
Manufactured goods classified chiefly by material and miscellaneous manufactured articles hold the second highest share, 19 per cent of total South-South trade, after fuels (25 per cent), followed by parts and components for electrical and electronic goods, which accounts for 15 per cent.

Chart 1 - World, developing economie's and South-south merchandise exports
(billion US dollars)

                  Source: UNCTADStat

Developing economies have also been gaining market share in international trade in services, Handbook figures show. The share of exports from developing countries grew from 22 per cent of the world total in 1995 to 30 per cent in 2012. Services-sector exports from these countries increased by almost 8 per cent in 2012, while they expanded by 6 per cent in the transition economies. At the same time, practically no growth was observed in services exports from developed countries last year. In construction and travel exports, developing economies now hold over 40 per cent of the global market. Their importance is also growing in transport and in computer services trade. However, developing and transition countries do not account for much of global trade in financial services or in trade related to intellectual property (royalties and license fees).

Chart 2 - Market shares of developing and developed economies' exports of selected services
(per cent)

                  Source: UNCTADStat

Along with providing detailed statistics on international merchandise and services trade, the updated Handbook covers investment, commodity prices, maritime transport, and other economic and social data, for all individual economies for which data are available. In addition, it includes figures for geographical regions, various economic groupings, and world totals. The Handbook aims each year to provide data for the analysis and evaluation of world trade, investment, international financial flows, and development. To the extent possible, UNCTAD provides estimates to fill in data gaps in order to furnish the most complete datasets.

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

Women Empowerment

Women’s economic empowerment is seen today as the single most important factor contributing to equality between women and men. Economic stability increases an individual’s options and choices in life. Economic empowerment puts women in a stronger position

and gives them the power to participate, together with men, in

the shaping of society, to influence development at all levels of

society, and to make decisions that promote their family’s and

their own wellbeing. Economic empowerment of women is a

matter of human rights and social justice.

Conceptualizing women’s economic empowerment. A common definition of empowerment encompasses both the process of change that enables individuals to have greater freedom of choice,

and the actions and choices that the individual makes. The

World Bank is one of the few actors to have defined women’s

economic empowerment. However, the World Bank definition

focuses principally on markets, that is, “…making markets

work for women and empowering women to compete in markets”.

Access to markets is important because inequality prevents

women from having equal access to productive resources

and economic opportunities. Sida’s definition of women’s economic

empowerment goes beyond the market and also encompasses

change in relation to access to and control over critical

economic resources and opportunities; it also addresses the

need to eliminate structural gender inequalities in the labour

market and reduce women’s unpaid work.

Sida defines women’s economic empowerment as the process which

increases women’s real power over economic decisions that influence their lives and priorities in society. Women’s Economic Empowerment can be achieved through equal access to and control over critical economic resources and opportunities, and the elimination of structural gender inequalities in the labour market including a better sharing of unpaid care work.

Women can achieve economic empowerment if

(1) the resources are available and women have the skills to

utilize them;

(2) they have access to economic opportunities and control

over the economic benefits of those opportunities; and

(3) they can use those benefits to make strategic choices leading

to positive changes in their lives.

In reality, women face obstacles throughout this process and overcoming many of them requires society to actively reduce gender discriminatory norms and practices and to ensure that public institutions are accountable for putting gender rights into practice. Female illiteracy, women’s lack of access to information, and gender discriminatory norms that prevent women from using and/or owning land are examples of obstacles that limit their access to and control of economic resources. Exploitative and discriminatory working conditions, gender segregation in the labour market, restricted mobility, women’s double work burden and diminished health – caused by gender-based violence, for instance

– are examples of factors that limit women’s ability to access

and/or enjoy the returns on their work.

Unpaid work, both in the productive and domestic spheres is one of the single most important obstacles to women’s economic empowerment.

Overall, women across the world endure heavy workloads

both outside and inside the home. Many studies show that

women’s work day is longer than men’s and that the proportion

of work receiving economic remuneration is smaller. A

substantial part of productive agricultural work today is unpaid

and carried out by women. In addition to productive

work, one of the major differences in economic empowerment

of women compared to men is the fact that women shoulder

the primary responsibility for unpaid care work within the

home. Indeed, society depends heavily on women’s unpaid

work to provide the necessary care of its citizens today. This

limits women’s free time to engage effectively in income-generating

work, and in many developing countries results in women’s acute ‘time poverty’. As a result more women than men lack access to valued resources and opportunities and continue to have a subordinate status in society.

The economic empowerment of women requires working with men, and challenging long-standing gender stereotypes. A vital starting point for increasing women’s economic participation is to work with

men to address the double burden of care-giving and paid work. Working with men and women to confront gender stereotypes

is important for economic empowerment of both women

and men, as it will expand men and women’s opportunities

to provide for themselves. Addressing the gender stereotyped

division of labour that condemns women to carry out the bulk

of unpaid work will also provide men with opportunities to expand

their role in society. It will allow men to combine family

and work, and engage in the care of their children and other

family members; it will also increase opportunities for them to

take up non-traditional male jobs and increase their options

for income-generating work. Overall, increasing women bargaining

power within the family is essential to enable women to take control over economic benefits and to expand their strategic life choices. Interventions that change power relations within the family for example addressing gender norms and practices limiting women and men’s choices will be essential to achieve women’s economic empowerment.Finally, a precondition for the effective economic empowerment of women is increased accountability by and systematic transformation of institutions to actively promote gender equality and women’s rights. In practical terms this means institutions questioning and changing their goals, strategies and working processes to promote gender equality. Understanding women’s economic empowerment in this way opens up opportunities to improve the situation of women through a number of interventions in different sectors.

Managing Forest through Provincial Strategy

 Managing Forest through Provincial Strategy

Managing the forest ecosystems of the province continues to evolve from an initial period of exploitation, to timber management, to integrated forest management and, today, to sustainable forest management. During this time, aboriginal people have used forests for shelter and subsistence purposes and, likewise, when European settlers arrived, they cleared land and used the forest for lumber to build homes, fishing stages and subsistence requirements.
Over time, the management of forests has changed from one of single value use to sustainable forest management involving environmental, economic and social values. This Provincial Strategy presents the direction for managing the forest ecosystems of the province. Embraced is the philosophy of finding a balance between environmental, economic and social values desired by society. The four strategic directions identified in this Strategy give guidance to balancing all forest values. The environmental, economic and social directions incorporate the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers criteria and indicators framework to measure progress towards sustainable forest management. A separate
strategic direction for Labrador is presented to address issues unique to that region of the province. A short summary of each strategic direction follows:
1. Ecologically-based forest management:
The foundation for sustainable forest management will be establishing an ecological planning framework. Ecosystem-based guidelines will be developed using existing information. A biodiversity assessment program will continue to be developed.
Biodiversity:
This Strategy will address three biodiversity values; protecting forest ecosystems, special places and wildlife habitat.
Healthy Forests:
Healthy forests will require maintaining the natural ecological processes and productivity of forest ecosystems.
Water and soil:
Essential to ecosystem productivity, aquatic habitat and human survival is the protection of soil and water.
Global impacts:
Work will be initiated to determine the total amount of carbon in the province's forest ecosystems.
2. Economic considerations:
Forest ecosystems will continue to provide many economic benefits to the province. This Provincial Strategy will guide the further development of both timber and non-timber forest products industries.
3. Social considerations:
This Strategy will ensure continued meaningful public participation in forest management planning.
4. Labrador
Aboriginal participation will continue to be supported and forest
management tools will be enhanced to enable responsible forest
management in Labrador.
All four strategic directions in this Provincial Strategy will require specific directing of financial and human resources, as well as partnerships with other groups in order to achieve successful implementation. To address the cross-departmental issues, a working group of government departments associated with this Strategy will be established. To ensure continued openness and transparency in managing our forests, the Department of Forest Resources and Agrifoods Forest Policy Committee will adopt an evaluation framework which will guide implementation of this Strategy and be the basis of an annual report on implementation progress.
Measuring the province's success in achieving sustainable forest management will be through the criteria and indicators defined in this Provincial Strategy. The Department of Forest Resources and Agrifoods will report to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador
by December 31, 2004 and again by December 31, 2009.
This Provincial Strategy will lead Newfoundland and Labrador into the 21st century of sustainable forest management. It provides the vision and direction to ensure that present and future generations will enjoy the benefits from our province's valuable forest ecosystems.

7 Characteristics of good International Monetary System

 7 Characteristics of good International Monetary System

On the improvement and reform of international monetary system, I would like to make three points.
First, what is a good international monetary system? If we want to make reforms and improvements to the
international monetary system, they must promote the characteristics that such a system should have. I suggest the following seven characteristics of a good international monetary system:
1) It should promote development, which means that the system can facilitate trade and investment.
2) It should provide correct incentives for those who work hard, so their efforts can pay-off. This means,
whether the country is big or small, and regardless of its region or religious makeup, et cetera, it should provide the right incentives.
3) It should be able to do the adjustment when the balance of payment is imbalanced. International history
suggests that countries compete for different reasons,some based on mercantilism (and a positive balance of
trade) others to make their money cheap. The system should be able to provide a mechanism to adjust each of these kinds of imbalances.
4) It should be able to provide a safety net so that during a crisis it can provide the necessary liquidity to deal
with the crisis.
5) It should have an accurate representation of the world and reflect the world economic fundamentals.
6) It should be stable and resilient against all kinds of shocks—economic, political and otherwise.
7) It should contribute to maintain the stability of exchange rates and effective regional arrangements.
If we consider human history for the last 100 or more years, we have experienced the gold standard, the Bretton Woods system and also the post-Bretton Woods (Jamaica Accord). Each of these different versions of the international monetary system can address some problems better than others. A desirable system should find an efficient balance between the strengths and weaknesses of the various systems.
The second remark I want to make is that if we know what a good international monetary system should look like, the next step is deciding how to reform the current international monetary system accordingly. Before we answer that question we have to ask, »What are the vulnerable points, the shortcomings of the current system?
We need to focus our surveillance on those points in order to prevent another crisis. The Lehman Brothers
crisis of 2008 shows that a lack of financial supervision is a vulnerable point that can trigger systemic risk.
Another example is the sovereign debt crisis of Europe: for a long time, surveillance and supervision of the advanced economies was largely ignored, then suddenly they built up high budget deficits and accumulated too much government debt, producing a sovereign debt crisis which has also caused systemic risk.
A third example concerns global liquidity and capital flows. And if we provide too much liquidity globally, we
risk triggering abrupt capital flows in or out, which can be dangerous. Some say that liquidity is a term that’s not defined clearly enough. Roughly speaking, global liquidity, as the term is used in IMF and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) research papers, refers to the total supply of the main reserve currencies. Global liquidity has two dimensions: one is the quantity of the money supply; the other is the price, e.g. the interest rate. If the quantity of supply is very large while the interest rate is very low, it means there is abundant liquidity globally. The fourth vulnerable point concerns imbalances. We know that the accumulation of a trade surplus, the accumulation of a trade deficit, can produce dangerous external imbalances. If we can identify these vulnerable points, we can focus our surveillance to prevent a crisis from happening. But this is difficult: sometimes there is a focus on one dimension combined with a neglect of other dimensions that can then produce instability. For example, in 2008 and 2009 the sovereign debt crisis occurred. With institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the capacity of surveillance is limited. It is impossible for surveillance to detect every vulnerability, every time, so we have hard choices.
In my third remark, I will comment briefly on broadening the SDR basket. Broadening the SDR basket is a good idea but we also have to look closely at the two IMF on this:
1) the basket of currencies should consist of the largest exporters. (This means that trade, especially export, is the most important consideration for currency to be in the basket), and 2) the currency should be freely usable. Keep in mind that the IMF is not using the term »fully convertible,«but »freely usable« which means that it’s freely usable for payments, settlements of trade and maybe some Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) transactions. The obvious candidates among the currencies are the BRICS countries. We should look to both the BRICS countries and the IMF for criteria. For most of the BRICS countries, the first criterion—export—is already satisfied, but the second criterion is rather weak. But a lot of countries are working on it and there has been rapid improvement.
If we put the BRICS countries into the present SDR basket, or even if we consider more countries to make up the SDR basket, we find that the new basket would decrease the volatility of the present basket in terms of variance and standard deviation. The broader basket would also have better representation, which reflects world economic fundamentals. I think in terms of commodity trade and export, and in terms of the valuation and the resilience of the SDR, this would be beneficial. I know that it takes time and we have to follow
the rules. There is no hurry, but I suggest to IMF, we’re starting to calculate. We shadow the SDR, which means that the IMF should calculate the simulation by using data so that we can accumulate statistics and evidence to inform future discussions and consideration of this issue.

Procurement as a green growth strategy

Procurement as a Green Growth Strategy

In order for government to fulfil its mandate to society, it must undertake large spending initiatives that simultaneously supply its own operation but also provide infrastructure and services for the community at large. Consequently, governments have large and diverse spending strategies on procurement ranging from routine items like stationary, computers, or furniture, to complex spending areas such as utility networks, schools, hospitals or homes. All this equates to substantial investment that can rise to as much as 45 per cent of government budgets, which is around 13 to 20 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in industrialized countries, and more elsewhere—35 per cent in South Africa; 43 per cent in India, 47 per cent in Brazil, 52 per cent in Ghana, 49 per cent in Mauritius and 46 per cent in Cost Rica. As such, public sector procurement is a major contributor to industry growth and stability across a wide range of sectors, providing finances and contracts that drive markets for goods and services.

In the procurement of infrastructure and works, governments are adding private investment to their spending through public–private partnerships/private finance initiatives (PPP/PFI). This means that, in addition to the large financial flows from government procurement budgets, private sector investment is also in part being directed by government policy and priorities. In the case of the procurement of works, in the 20 years between 1990 and 2009 there have been more than 1,300 PPP contracts worth more than €5 million signed within the EU, with a combined capital value in excess of EUR250 billion. PPPs ability to provide investment in adverse climates is also demonstrated through the fact that, since 2007, some 350 new projects representing almost €70 billion have reached financial closure within the EU . Moreover, currently accounting for only 4 per cent of total public investment worldwide, figures suggest that PPP has room to grow and the potential to play an even greater role in future public infrastructure investment .

The case for a sustainable approach to government procurement is the desire to harness the massive purchasing power of public sectors to transform industry growth into green industry growth. Not only is it possible to ‘green’ existing industries through sustainable procurement policies, but purchasing power is large enough to also catalyse green growth, as industry and enterprises within the green sector will be willing to invest, innovate and scale up when demand is secure and well directed.

GPP’s ability to stimulate industry growth can be best demonstrated through the elevation of previously niche or restricted green markets into mainstream consciousness. In North America, the domestic market for green electronics, including computers and mobile telephones, was born when the Federal Government began buying green in the early 1990s. Similarly in Europe, public procurement served as the impetus to launch markets for organic food and drink, fuel-efficient vehicles and sustainable timber products.

The influence of GPP is far reaching, as prioritizing sustainability considerations in government purchasing create positive externalities across both the domestic economy and international supplier chains: Through GPP, government can:

                [i]Support the implementation of environmental policies on water and energy efficiency, waste management, renewable energy supply, resource efficient and cleaner production, lower greenhouse gas emissions and more.

                [ii]By ensuing scaled up and long term demand, provide an incentive for investment and innovation on sustainable products, services and works.

                [iii]Improve transparency and efficiency in procurement processes.

                [iv]Realize cost savings in the construction and operation of public assets and services

                [v]Support the introduction of new and improved sustainable goods, services and works into the market.