December 3, 2015

Trade and Economic Transformation

Date: Thursday, 17th December 2015, 11.00am – 12.30pm
Venue: Hilton Hotel, Ivory Room

Panellists

Frank Matsaert, TradeMark East Africa, CEO; Prof. Bernard HOEKMAN, Professor and Director, The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute; Dr. Dirk Willem te VELDE ,Senior Research Fellow / Head of International Economic Development Group, Overseas Development Institute; Dr. Maximiliano MENDEZ-PARRA , Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute; Arancha GONZALEZ,
Executive Director, International Trade Centre

Session Objective

Economic growth is necessary for development. The increase in the quantity of resources available to produce and/or distribute is essential in the development process. However, economic growth alone does not guarantee all development objectives. The quality of economic growth matters, and it essential for sustained development that growth involves some form of Economic Transformation.
Trade can be a powerful channel to mobilise resources from low to high productivity sectors and to improve productivity within sectors. The Supporting Economic Transformation (SET) programme (http://set.odi.org/) has explored the links between trade, trade policy and economic transformation (http://set.odi.org/trade-policy-and-economic-transformation/). Trade helps to diversify production, discover and develop new productive capabilities and to increase domestic value added.

Services are becoming increasingly important in world trade. Moreover, as services are an important component of the production processes, the trade and production structure, in value added terms, become similar. The SET programme is studying in depth the links between trade in services and economic transformation.