Trade, Governance and Development: Spreading excellence through dialogue

Multilateral trade liberalization have increased global welfare. Further trade liberalization would lead to further welfare gains. Yet, welfare on its own is meaningless if the benefits and opportunities remain out of reach for those who most need them. What are the enabling conditions that would lead marginalized and emerging economies to reap the growth-inducing and poverty-reducing benefits of global trade?

What are the necessary rules and regulations ensuring a sound business environment? How can trade facilitation best contribute to set the conditions for sustainable development to happen? How can regional construction play a seminal role in defining the national and global trade environment?

What are the best practices and what have been the recipes that have resulted in failure?

These are some questions the workshop aimed to answer.

By bringing together both experienced and younger participants, from both developing and developed countries, from the academic, government and business communities, the purpose of this event was to build the capacity of understanding and informing substantially the trade policy-making process, to create networks and to support regional initiatives.

The aims embedded in a network of academics like Garnet were not only to spread expertise and knowledge, but also to learn from business and government practices through dialogue, confidence building and by enhancing and spreading means to achieve excellence. It was the ambition of the first Garnet capacity building workshop to offer an interface to these different and equally important stakeholders.