The report entitled, “Channelling Trade and Investment into Sustainable Development” emphasizes that cutting trade costs and deepening regional cooperation are key to ensuring the benefits of trade and investment can be shared across the region. The report proposes a policy framework to further enhance the contribution of international trade and foreign direct investment to sustainable development. It also provides estimates of the economic, social and environmental impacts of alternative regional trade and investment liberalisation policy scenarios, when implemented alone or in conjunction with selected domestic social and environmental policies. This integrated approach facilitates the participation of countries in global value chains and significantly increases the competitiveness of regional exports. This integrated liberalisation scenario provides strong evidence of the important synergies that can be achieved by liberalising and facilitating trade and investment.

Source: The Nation Bangkok October 30, 2017 18:11 UTC