KEY CONCLUSIONS:
- International economic relations are the key to global development
“From 1990 to 2014, world trade saw approximately a 5-fold growth in general and a 2.5-fold expansion per capita. As a result, around 400 million people globally are no longer living in absolute poverty,” said Alexey Mordashov, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Severstal.
- Digitisation is becoming a key factor
“We have a new age. Digitisation really makes enormous changes when we talk about trade investments. It is not just about products, it is about services, it is about digital flows, which we still try to embrace and to understand how that will change things in a significant way, and it will,” said Hans-Paul Buerkner, Chairman, The Boston Consulting Group.
- In a tense geopolitical environment, business dialogues become increasingly important
“Business can become a driving force. Where governments have not reached an agreement yet, the business community can voluntarily approve relevant standards and codes of conduct,” said Svetlana Lukash, Deputy Head of the Presidential Experts Directorate, Sherpa G20 Russian Federation.
CHALLENGES:
- Protectionism and trade barriers are among key hurdles in the way of world trade development
“The number of new protectionist initiatives adopted since 2008, when the intensive work started to remove the barriers, amounts to approximately 1,700,” said Alexander Shokhin, President, Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP).
- Disruptions in economic relations negatively affect people’s lives
“The global crisis and subsequent decrease in trade volumes have impacted not only the global economy growth, but also people’s quality of life,” said Svetlana Lukash.
- Expected drop in the number of jobs due to digitisation
“In developed economies, around 80% of job losses are caused by technological change, not by imports,” said Jurgen Heraeus, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Heraeus Holding GmbH.
“We need to communicate the opportunities with the digitalisation, but at the same time we have also observed in our studies that maybe 10% of the current jobs will disappear through digitalisation. <…> We need to adapt the skills of the people,” said Andreas Schaal, Director of Global Relations, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
SOLUTIONS:
- Team play by political and business communities in search of effective responses to new global challenges
“Business should help G20 increase its influence on global policy,” said Arkady Dvorkovich, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.
“It is important for us that key business priorities become part of G20 governments’ national plans,” said Alexander Shokhin.
- Renouncing protectionism
“We would like the G20 countries to roll back protectionism and to remove the existing trade barriers. <…> We believe that the WTO is central to shaping the rules for global trade and enforcing the existing trade rules,” said Jurgen Heraeus.
- Business taking responsibility for changes in the market economy
“Companies really have to take responsibility for <…> making sure that there is development of skills of employees, but also in the school system, in training systems, to ensure that people can deal with the change in their communities, in their societies, <…> and to make sure that people still see the market-based economies as the best way of creating a good standard of living and improving the standard of living,” said Hans-Paul Buerkner.
- Improving dispute settlement procedures
“There is a need to analyse the best practices and improve the dispute settlement procedure in the WTO, make it simpler and cheaper, maybe introduce additional monitoring of anti-dumping proceedings,” said Alexey Mordashov.