Words matter. These are the best Arancha Gonzalez Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Governments can’t credibly claim to be concerned about stagnant growth and ageing workforces unless they are actively seeking to empower women economically. One way they can speed up progress towards gender-equal economic opportunity is to change laws that are holding women back.
What exactly is trade facilitation? In a nutshell, it is an effort to enable global trade by reducing red tape and streamline customs. In even simpler words: making it easier for companies to trade across borders.
The representatives of young professionals and woman entrepreneurs deserve seats at the big table to evolve viable, efficient, and sustainable solutions for problems the world is faced with. Without their participation, there will always be a deficit of compassion and innovation.
Governments around the world are looking for economic growth and job creation. African economies are no exception, with increasing recognition that growth has to be built on a more diversified economic structure in order to make a lasting contribution to development.
It makes perfect economic sense to integrate women in the economy in the developing world in order to catch up with advanced countries, thereby minimising socioeconomic costs as well.
The populists are right in one key area: voters want jobs and equitable growth, and can hardly be faulted for that. The challenge is to find a more inclusive growth trajectory that can be sustained economically, ecologically, and politically.
There are bridges that we have built not only between individual companies but also between associations. This will keep business and investments flowing.
In their pursuit of growth and diversification, African economies should consider transforming the discourse from a focus on industrialisation to a broader one centred on value addition in agriculture, manufacturing, and services.
There is no intrinsic reason African countries should be importing, rather than exporting, basic staples like rice or higher value products like frozen chicken, cooking oil, or instant noodles.
While tourism is often resource-intensive, it is a major driver of poverty reduction in developing countries.
The social and legal discrimination that relegates hundreds of women to subordinate or marginal economic roles has a huge aggregate cost.
Fully implementing the WTO trade facilitation agreement is one ingredient to reduce border delays and costs for traded merchandise.
It is no coincidence that in the wake of the Arab Spring, investment in youth-related initiatives, especially related to employment, has increased sharply.
The ‘SheTrades’ programme aims to connect one million women entrepreneurs to markets by 2020 with a campaign, a focussed networking app, and a range of international and national information resources.
Without action to de-carbonize our economies, unchecked climate change threatens to batter lives and economies around the world, hitting the poorest people hardest.
Everything we produce and consume has an impact on the environment, on social fabrics, and on the economy. This impact can be positive or negative and, frequently, some combination of the two.
Large companies everywhere tend to be more productive than small ones. But the gap in productivity is far wider in developing countries.
Ever since the first power looms put weavers out of work in the late 18th century, technology has increased productivity but threatened jobs for humans.
Inward-looking unilateral trade policies invite retaliation.
Many African smallholder farmers did not share in the ‘green revolution’ productivity gains driven by modern seeds and techniques, irrigation, and greater fertilizer use in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s.
Look at a map of the world: the countries which do not trade much, or which trade only in oil and gas, tend to be in regions which suffer the most social and political instability.
Sustainable production and consumption matter immensely to the people I meet every day as head of the International Trade Centre, which works with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help them boost growth and job creation by improving their competitiveness and connecting to international markets.
Economic desperation often drives wildlife destruction like poaching or illegal logging. But trade can help create powerful financial incentives for communities to preserve the biodiversity around them.
Women are the half of the engine of our societies; they are half of the engines of our economies.
I think that when voters react negatively to trade and investment, they are really expressing their angst about the pace of technological change.
Creating large numbers of decent jobs for young people is critical for achieving overall development objectives, from poverty reduction to better health and education.
The unfolding migratory crisis has become one of the most acute challenges facing the international community. Millions of lives are at stake. All of us have a responsibility to act. Collectively, we need to find solutions.
Connecting small and medium-sized businesses to international markets can create work for host country nationals alongside refugees, building economic growth and resilience in host communities.
Japan has huge potential in women – potential, especially in the area of the economy, that Japan is not using fully.
Laws matter. With effective implementation and enforcement, good laws can nudge forward positive changes in social and cultural mores.
Latin Americans are all too familiar with the boom and bust cycles associated with economic populism.
International consumers can rest assured that their quinoa purchases have benefited some of Latin America’s poorest people, together with their families.
Some of the anti-trade sentiment is the result of rising wealth inequality and stagnating real wages.
Consumers need more insight into the goods and services they purchase. Businesses need to produce those goods and services more sustainably.
We often run the risk, when discussing women empowerment, to think that this is about women talking about women with other women, but this is not the point.
Women are the most underutilized ‘resource’ in the world economy.
Our main aim globally is to connect more women to the economy because we know there is a specific market failure there: women are having more difficulty in business than men.
When the International Trade Centre, the agency I head, works with German electronics giant Bosch to help Kenyan food processing companies boost their productivity and export competitiveness, we may well be creating future customers for Bosch washing machines.
In landlocked developing countries, geographical barriers to markets are unnecessarily accompanied by virtual ones: their e-connectivity rates are among the world’s lowest.
Improving SME productivity translates into more and better paying jobs, distributed across less fortunate sections of the economy.
Technology is making it easier for women to connect to business opportunities around the world. Legal obstacles must not be allowed to stand in their way. That’s not just because it’s economically smart. It’s because discrimination shouldn’t be the law.
Trade and investment are good for innovation – open economies allow new ideas and technologies to diffuse more quickly from wherever they are created.
It has been proven through studies by the World Bank and others that companies participating in international trade are more competitive.
Companies that operate across borders have the expertise SMEs need. Who better to help smallholder farmers navigate complex sustainability standards than the companies who demand – or set – them?
The lack of livelihood opportunities in refugee camps pushes many people to embark on dangerous journeys in the quest for a better life.
Trade and investment promotion organizations are crucial partners in ITC’s work to enable SMEs to internationalize. They sustain and multiply the impact of trade-related technical support and allow SMEs to function with confidence in any location.
African pressure has led the E.U. to rethink part of its agricultural subsidy programme.
Africans don’t just need more jobs: they need better jobs.
Governments everywhere have ministries dedicated to women’s affairs. I know of only one with a Ministry for Women Empowerment: Indonesia. Charged with the ‘realization of gender equality and justice’ together with children’s well-being, the ministry frames gender equality as a matter of justice.
Through the SITA initiative, we are building bridges between India and East Africa by taking Indian companies to these countries to see with their own eyes what the opportunities are.
For Latin American countries seeking to play a bigger role in global trade, effectively implementing trade-facilitating reforms could be an important tool in their toolkits.
Sometimes all it takes to connect entrepreneurs to overseas buyers is to get them into the same room.
ITC looks forward to working with the chief minister and the government of India to ensure trade leads to impact on the ground.
When women are paid for their work and have control over how the money gets spent, they invest much more of their income than men do in their families’ education and health.
If governments start to go it alone on trade, it will become harder, not easier, to generate the jobs and rising incomes that angry electorates want.
