Enabling Trade: Valuing Growth Opportunities
“Enabling Trade: Valuing Growth Opportunities” finds that reducing supply chain barriers can increase global GDP up to 6 times more than removing all import tariffs. Such large increases in GDP would be associated with positive effects on unemployment, potentially adding millions of jobs to the global workforce. The report builds on eighteen industry case examples, spanning multiple industries and regions, to understand on-the-ground implications of supply chain barriers and the policy implications resulting. Companies must recognize and manage supply chain costs, and governments should take a holistic approach that considers the entire supply chain, focusing on all policies that impact supply chain efficiency to improve national competitiveness.
A supply chain is the network of activities involved in producing and getting a product to consumers, and spans the manufacturing process as well as transport and distribution services. Supply chain barriers can result from inefficient customs and administrative procedures, complex regulation and weaknesses in infrastructure services, among many others. Lowering supply chain barriers is effective because it eliminates resource waste and reduces costs to trading firms and, by extension, lowers prices to consumers and businesses. “Enabling Trade: Valuing Growth Opportunities” is a World Economic Forum report in collaboration with Bain & Company and the World Bank. The World Economic Forum’s Enabling Trade programme focuses on measuring whether economies have in place the necessary attributes for enabling trade and where improvements are most needed.
Read the Executive Summary
Read the Online Appendix