Latest content: Trade and economy

While the term ‘green economy’ has been widely used at the international level, very little information exists about what the concept looks like in practice.

Aid for Trade (AfT) has been an integral part of official development assistance (ODA) since its inception at the World Trade Organization’s Hong Kong Ministerial in 2005.

Joseph Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton make ambitious and innovative proposals for revitalising and rebalancing the World Trade Organization in a new report for the Commonwealth Secretariat: The Right to Trade: Rethinking the Aid for Trade Agenda (this title is available as a free pdf ebook).

Aid for trade is a fixture in the development landscape, accounting for approximately 25 per cent of total ODA, and is being positioned as a building block in the future development agenda beyond the 2015 expiry of the Millennium Development Goals.

As International Investment Agreements (IIAs) continue to evolve and become increasingly complex, a key challenge for developing countries is how to maintain coherent investment obligations that are consistent across any overlapping treaty provisions.

This issue of Commonwealth Trade Hot Topics argues that SVEs have three interrelated reasons for an ambitious outcome at the Rio+20 conference and the most important but often overlooked reasons relate to trade.

This Economic Paper assesses new innovative measures in trade in service negotiations that reflect the vulnerabilities and challenges faced by developing countries.

This Economic Paper assesses the potential trade effects of rules on procurement policies in Commonwealth ACP countries.

Even though individual nations in South Asia are among the world’s fastest growing economies it is, as a region, the least integrated.

AfT came under renewed focus under World Trade Organization (WTO)-sponsored Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, as many developing countries realised that their lack of supply-side capacity prevented them from sharing in the expansion of global trade that has occurred in recent years.

China and India’s demand for oil and other raw materials to fuel their recent economic development has led to significant trading partnerships with Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The international community met in Istanbul, Turkey, on 9–13 May 2011 to forge a ten-year programme of action for the 48 least developed countries (LDCs).

This resource book highlights strategies for community management and financing.

Public–Private Partnerships Policy and Practice is a comprehensive reference guide on PPP theory and practice for senior policy-makers and other public sector officials in developing countries.

At its best, strategic planning for an export strategy combines learning from the past, exploring the future and coping with unpredictability.

This is the first study to look at the trade effects on small states of the current global slowdown.

Through twenty regional and country case studies, Trading Stories pulls together the key links between trade, gender and economic development.

It was hoped that trade preferences, offered to exports from developing countries by industrialised countries, would give greater economic benefits than has been the case.

This report covers the work of the 53-nation Commonwealth and its principal intergovernmental organisation, the Commonwealth Secretariat, from July 2007 to June 2009.

This issue of Commonwealth Trade Hot Topics identifies key issues of policy relevance in the debate on biofuel production and the rising food commodity prices contextualised in the WTO trade rules.

Why have the least developed countries, and other poorer countries, failed to grow as fast as other economies during the recent period of globalisation?Professor Srinivasan explores the broad links between growth in income, globalisation, and poverty reduction.

The Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the ECOWAS states of West Africa envisages cooperation between the two sides with the aim of enhancing investment and private sector development in the ECOWAS region.

How can developing country governments seek to initiate the economic transformation that so many desire?For many countries the dramatic shift from low to high added-value activities will involve the export of tradeable services, particularly professional services.

Horticultural Chain Management for Eastern and Southern Africa is a two-volume work designed to help trainers develop suitable materials to assist small farmers and producers to supply high quality horticultural produce for sale.This Theoretical Manual takes trainers through a step by step approach of progressive learning.