Ending without a joint communiqué, the two-day G20 Trade and Investment Ministerial Meeting endorsed an outcome document and Chair’s summary, calling for measures to promote digitalisation of trade documents, a generic mapping framework for global value chains (GVCs) and a “Jaipur Call for Action” to enhance the access of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to information.
All G20 member nations “unanimously agreed” on the outcome document, barring one paragraph on “geopolitical issues” linked to the Russia-Ukraine war, as taken from the G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration in November last year.
Russia and China took distinct positions on the paragraph relating to geopolitical issues. Russia rejected the inclusion of geopolitical para in the Jaipur outcome document stating it does not conform to the G20 mandate. China stated that the G20 Trade Ministerial is not the right forum to discuss geopolitical issues.
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“The outcome that we have come up with today, agreed by the entire group of ministers, is actually one of the most significant outcomes in the G20. It’s an outcome document and Chair summary. It has several new elements which were not part of the G20 agenda before and can become the framework or guiding principle, through which we can see significant progress in international trade and growth of the world economy,” Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said.
“Only one para… which is out of a 17-page (outcome) document, is an area where we could not get consensus for obvious reasons,” he added.
The ministers recommended certain priority areas to the G20 leaders, who would meet on September 9-10 in New Delhi, to ensure that international trade and investment can effectively contribute to resilient GVCs, spur integration of MSMEs in global trade, and to advance WTO (World Trade Organisation) reforms.
The G20 member countries deliberated on five priority areas — trade for growth and prosperity, trade and resilient global value chain, integrating MSMEs in global trade, logistics for trade and World Trade Organisation (WTO) reform. G20 accounts for 85 per cent of the global GDP and 78 per cent of global trade.
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On the WTO reform, the ministers reaffirmed their commitment to conduct discussions with a view to having a fully and well-functioning Dispute Settlement System accessible to all members by 2024.
The dispute settlement of the WTO has not been fully functional since the end of 2019 as the US has not agreed to the appointment of members to the appellate body because of which many cases are pending.
“We will continue to work constructively to ensure positive outcomes including WTO reform at the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC),” the outcome document said.
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The members noted the importance of taking necessary steps towards increasing the availability of trade and market-related information to MSMEs in an accessible manner, the document said, adding that there is a need to scale up the existing portal that is already providing such business and trade-related information to MSMEs.
At present, there are several domestic, regional and international portals, such as the Global Trade Helpdesk, Trade4MSMEs and government-sponsored platforms that seek to provide trade-related information to MSMEs
Regarding sharing of data for the sector, it said the member countries need to provide Global Trade Helpdesk with appropriate aggregated trade-related information relevant to MSMEs available on a single portal and provide access to data or information publicly available on such portals through appropriate technological frameworks.
It suggested the G20 leaders recommend ITC (International Trade Centre) work on a detailed implementation plan, in consultation with UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) and the WTO; and incorporate the principles of technological neutrality, data privacy, data security and reliability while upgrading the Global Trade Helpdesk.
On digitalisation of trade documents, the outcome document said that traditional trade documentation processes are often mired in paperwork, leading to substantial costs in time and labour and due to that the G20 Trade and Investment Minister has identified a set of high-level principles for the digitalisation of the documents.
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“In the current global trade environment, the reliance on paper-based documentation processes is prevalent across most jurisdictions. While such practices have traditionally served the needs of the sector, they are now recognised as time-consuming, labour-intensive and prone to errors,” it said.
Digitalisation can reduce these costs significantly as the delay in consignments’ clearance due to manual paperwork leads to further increased costs of logistics besides causing suboptimal utilisation of logistics capabilities.
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It said the digitalisation initiatives for trade documents should remain unbiased towards any specific technology, software or system and the initiatives should ensure the immutability and interoperability of data for seamless communication and exchange across diverse systems.
On strengthening GVCs, the document stated that as countries take steps to mitigate risks to GVCs, including regional value chains, policy actions can benefit from a well-defined, voluntary and non-binding generic mapping framework based on certain building blocks.
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These blocks include collecting timely high-quality sector-level data; and the use of models and indicators, which can provide key insights from such GVC data.
“G20 members can come together to address the need for keeping critical GVCs resilient and robust,” it said, adding that a few high-level principles that can guide these efforts include data-driven analysis.
The members endorsed voluntary and non-binding “G20 Generic Framework for Mapping GVCs”. “We are working towards understanding where the problems in GVCs are and what needs to be done…It takes care of data, takes care of analysis, takes care of concentration of suppliers and markets. It addresses concerns around volatility of trade volume and value. It also looks at upstream and downstream product needs or industry needs. It addresses the criticality of seamless flow of goods through the value chain, and also looks at connectivity,” Goyal said.
In the Trade for Growth and Prosperity part of the discussion, the G20 members agreed to strengthen cooperation to increase transparency of Technical Barriers to Trade and Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures both of which set standards on imports to protect human, plant or animal health.