The Global Enabling Trade Report 2016 Home

  • Global debt has risen to dangerous levels. Here’s what needs to be done

    Friday 13th of May 2022

    We live in dangerous times. The world faces renewed uncertainty, as war comes on top of an ever-changing and persistent pandemic, now in its third year. Moreover, problems that predated COVID-19 have not gone away. When policymakers return to Washington in the coming days for the Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank, one of the central topics will be growing debt vulnerabilities in the world.

  • How can the world overcome the biggest global commodity shock in decades?

    Thursday 12th of May 2022

    For nearly 30 years, greater trade, investment and innovation bolstered an unprecedented era of prosperity—and brought the world closer to ending extreme poverty. It allowed the incomes of the poorest nations to narrow the gap with the wealthiest and reduced the frequency and severity of national economic crises.

  • These 3 charts show the impact of war in Ukraine on global trade

    Tuesday 26th of April 2022

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created “immense human suffering”, but it is also damaging global trade, which will likely impact low-income countries the most, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is warning.

  • Why Sri Lanka is facing one of its worst economic crises

    Monday 25th of April 2022

    The island nation of Sri Lanka is in the midst of one of the worst economic crises it’s ever seen. It has just defaulted on its foreign debts for the first time since its independence, and the country’s 22 million people are facing crippling 12-hour power cuts, and an extreme scarcity of food, fuel and other essential items such as medicines.

  • Here’s why globalization is here to stay

    Friday 22nd of April 2022

    BlackRock CEO Larry Fink thinks the war in Ukraine is accelerating the end of globalization that has shaped the new world order for the last 30 years.

  • Five ‘Monday morning priorities’ for private equity investors looking to progress on sustainability

    Wednesday 20th of April 2022

    The pressure on private equity investors to deliver real impact on environmental and social issues alongside financial returns – often referred to as ‘sustainable investing’ – has rapidly escalated.

  • TradeTech has huge potential to boost trade – here’s what policy-makers should know

    Tuesday 12th of April 2022

    TradeTech – in short, technology that facilitates trade – can be understood in two layers: a first level of transforming internal systems and processes from analogue to digital; a second level in which trade process optimization and synchronization between different parties is possible thanks to new technologies and greater connectivity. For it to achieve its full potential to produce innovative solutions that grow economic, societal and environmental value, it needs to be globally coordinated to unleash efficiency gains and mitigate risks like job displacement and environmental harm.

  • What are sanctions, and are we in a new era of economic war? This week’s Radio Davos

    Friday 8th of April 2022

    As opponents to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seek to isolate Moscow, we ask an expert: what are sanctions, do they work, and how will the sanctions and Russia’s countermeasures change the geopolitical landscape?

  • How to boost inclusive investment decision-making in global health

    Tuesday 29th of March 2022

    According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, development assistance for global health has more than tripled since 2000. Investors—ranging from traditional development donors to commercial impact investors—contributed an estimated $54,8 billion into the global health sector in 2020. This represents a nearly 36% increase from the year before.

  • What do sanctions help achieve? An expert explains

    Tuesday 22nd of March 2022

    Economic sanctions have been used as a tool of war for centuries. In 17th- and 18th-century Europe, economic sanctions were frequently implemented by countries at war. They included prohibitions on trade, the closure of ports against enemies, and bans on trade in certain commodities. Economic sanctions continue to play an important role in the response to terrorism, nuclear proliferation, military conflicts, and other foreign policy crises.

  • The $100bn industry that’s poised to take an electric leap of faith

    Tuesday 15th of March 2022

    The $100 billion Western rental car industry, flush with cash from a profitable pandemic, is gradually getting its electric show on the road, and Chinese-made vehicles are poised to play a starring role.

  • Carbon trading: Why shipping should be included in the EU’s emissions system

    Wednesday 16th of February 2022

    The European Commission has proposed adding shipping to the bloc’s carbon market for the first time, in a move that is set to shake up the industry after years of avoiding pollution charges by the bloc.

  • How trade facilitation can support supply chain diversity in a post-pandemic world

    Friday 11th of February 2022

    After two years of a global pandemic, international trade is bruised and battered. The carefully tuned machinery we call the supply chain has become erratic, impacting all parts of the world. We overestimated the sturdiness of the system and underestimated the costs of dysfunction. While international trade remains resilient, its recovery will probably take an adjusted form.

  • Consumer spending, private investment drive US GDP growth

    Tuesday 1st of February 2022

    The U.S. economy bounced back from its pandemic-induced slump in 2021, growing at the fastest clip since 1984. According to the first preliminary estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday, real GDP increased 5.7 percent in 2021, more than making up for the 3.4 percent decrease suffered in the previous year.

  • Boosting capital for development – Here’s how to advance sustainable Foreign Direct Investment

    Thursday 20th of January 2022

    Foreign direct investment (FDI) can play an important role in delivering the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Investment flows can help advance a nation’s development goals by bringing capital, employment, export opportunities, greater consumer choice, advanced technologies, managerial know-how and overall economic growth.

  • The world is drowning in data. Why don’t we trade it like on a stock exchange?

    Wednesday 19th of January 2022

    The digital revolution is flooding the world with data. By 2025, an astounding 175 zettabytes – that’s 175 trillion gigabytes – of new data is expected to be generated annually, a fivefold increase on 2018. Much of that data will end up sitting idle on servers and hard drives –unused, unanalyzed, and, perhaps worst of all, unshared.

  • IMF: Global shipping costs are easing but pressures remain

    Monday 17th of January 2022

    Shipping costs soared over the past year as consumers unleashed pent-up savings to buy new merchandise while the pandemic continued to snarl the world’s supply chains. Container rates have more than quadrupled since the start of the pandemic, with some of the biggest gains concentrated in the first three quarters of last year.

  • How Covid broke supply chains, and how AI and blockchain could fix them

    Thursday 13th of January 2022

    When the coronavirus crisis erupted in 2020, it became apparent that the medical emergency was accompanied by severe shortages, especially in some medical devices.

  • 3 ways digital currencies could change global trade

    Thursday 13th of January 2022

    Digital currencies are growing: the market is valued at more than $2 trillion and involves more than 15,000 varieties. In 2021, El Salvador even adopted Bitcoin as its legal currency.

  • 3 ways the MENA region can build a sustainable economic recovery

    Monday 10th of January 2022

    At the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos two years ago, we discussed the need for MENA countries to unite as a trading bloc and how that represents an opportunity to add around $2.5 trillion in combined GDP to the wealth of the region.

  • Supply chain resilience: How are pandemic-related disruptions reshaping managerial thinking?

    Wednesday 22nd of December 2021

    The COVID-19 pandemic has tested the effectiveness of 20 years of research, debate and planning on supply chain resilience.

  • How to improve digital economy regulation through increased transparency

    Friday 10th of December 2021

    Life is full of ironies. The internet was to herald an era of greater transparency and accountability of governments – putting more information in the hands of citizens. Yet, it turns out, the regulation of the digital economy is one of the least transparent policy domains. No international organization systematically tracks changes in laws, regulations and enforcement practice in this space. The media no longer has the resources for tasks like this. A few think tanks and researchers put out occasional reports. For law firms, policy surveillance is often just a marketing tool.

  • Globalization and world trade bounce back from the impact of COVID-19: report

    Tuesday 7th of December 2021

    COVID-19 has not undermined globalization as much as some had predicted. Although travel and tourism have been hard hit, international trade has surged during the pandemic, according to a new study of global connectedness.

  • This is how global car use could change between now and 2050

    Tuesday 30th of November 2021

    While car use is projected to fall in North America and Europe until 2050, Asia is the continent where the car as a mode of transportation is expected to become much more prevalent. In the next three decades, Asian car use is projected to climb to more than 40 percent of trips taken, up from just 28 percent in 2015.

  • What to expect from the next WTO Conference

    Monday 29th of November 2021

    This article was previously published on 24 November 2021.

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