Joint WTO/World Bank Trade and Poverty Forum — “Connecting to trade: Policies and programmes for maximizing poverty reduction impact”

More than three-quarters of the world’s extreme poor live in rural areas in developing countries, with the burden of poverty falling heaviest on women. While overall poverty and the gap between rural and urban areas has been falling, poverty rates in rural areas remain substantially higher than in urban areas. Evidence is emerging that pockets of poverty cluster geographically in rural areas that are poorly connected to urban centres of growth, where the poor may become trapped in low-productivity jobs. 

Key questions:

• What are the main trade-related challenges that the extreme poor in rural areas face?
• What are the most high-impact interventions and policies to allow them to connect to trade opportunities?
• How do distortions in international agricultural markets affect the capacity of the extreme poor to benefit fully from trade — and what risks are present stemming from this?
• How can these risks be managed at the national, regional and international levels?
• How do gender inequalities limit the capacity of women to benefit from trade opportunities?
• How can these be overcome and how can trade have a greater impact on poverty reduction by creating economic opportunities for women?

Keynote speaker: Will Martin, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute and President of the International Association of Agricultural Economists
Presentation

Panel:

• Paul Brenton, Lead Economist, Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice, World Bank Group Presentation
• Eva Bursvik, Senior Policy Specialist — Trade, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) 
• Ahmad Mukhtar, Economist, Trade and Food Security, Trade and Markets Division, UN Food and Agriculture Organization
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Question and answer session

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Several researchers, including participants in the WTO Academic Programme, will present their work in this area. 

• The WTO and the World Bank are undertaking a joint work programme on trade and poverty, following their report released in June 2015, The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty. Research on the role of trade policy to increase the welfare of the bottom 40 per cent, trade facilitation and the implementation of the trade facilitation agreement to reduce poverty, trade and inequality, mainstreaming trade into national development strategies, and the role of the WTO and policy makers in facilitating this process are of particular interest. The participation of the WTO Chairs in this project aims at increasing the visibility of their research and facilitates interactions between policy makers, trade practitioners and academics.
• A brief synthesis will be provided by the Council on Economic Policies of the theoretical and empirical literature on the nexus between trade and employment, emphasizing the role of trade in job creation, wage and gender inequality, as well as the quality of jobs. The three research papers presented in this session will tackle some of the issues mentioned above. More particularly, the Chair from Benin will assess the implication of trade liberalization on poverty reduction both for the urban and rural region and how to make trade inclusive into national development strategy plans. The research from Jordan focuses on the macroeconomic link between trade and growth and how trade could help in reducing poverty. The case of Tunisia offers in-depth analysis of the effects of Tunisian trade policy on household welfare. More specifically the objective is to estimate the distributional effects of trade policy at the micro level, on the basis of the results of a household survey.

Panel:

• Johannes Schwarzer, Trade Policy Fellow, Council on Economic Policies
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• Taleb Awad-Warrad, Professor of Economics, WTO-Chair Holder, University of Jordan
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• Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso, Professor, Chair of Development Economics, Goettingen University (joint author with WTO-Chair Holder, Tunis Business School)
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• Fulbert Amoussouga-Gero, WTO-Chair Holder, University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin, former member of UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on the post-2015 Development Agenda
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Question and answer session

Policies and development interventions are most effective when data is available to help measure initial conditions and monitor progress. National statistical capacity has improved, but much more needs to be done to fill data gaps — and mine new data sets (in particular so-called big data). A “smart data revolution” has the potential to reduce long lags in data collection and dramatically improve the quality of data. One suggestion reported in the World Bank's Global Monitoring Report 2015/2016 is that leveraging the expertise of telecommunication companies and software developers to carry out real-time surveys could reduce the cost of conducting them by about 60 per cent. Another challenge is to find the right tools for making use of the increasing range of data sources available to policymakers, in ways that help maximize the impact of trade integration on poverty reduction.

Key questions:

• How can data be used to help develop frameworks for analysing trade-related costs faced by the extreme poor at the country level, as a basis for informing policy?
• What trade data exists, and how can this be complemented by data collected through less traditional means, e.g., mobile phone surveys, geospatial information, social media, big data, and so on?
• How to balance collecting accurate data with doing so in a cost-effective manner? 

Panel:

• Paola de Salvo, Information Technology Officer, Group on Earth Observations
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• Max Richman, Data Scientist, GeoPoll
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• Marcus Bartley Johns, Senior Trade Specialist, Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice, World Bank Group
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• Roberta Piermartini, Senior Counsellor, Economic Research and Statistics Division, World Trade Organization
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Question and answer session
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Latest World Bank projections suggest that some 700 million people now live on less than US$1.90 a day — the updated international extreme poverty line. While poverty rates have declined in all regions, progress has been uneven. East Asia saw the most dramatic reduction in extreme poverty.  Fewer than 44 million of the extremely poor live in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia combined. In South Asia, the share of the population living in extreme poverty has dipped below 20 per cent. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to most of the deeply poor, with 42.6 per cent of the population living on less than US$1.90 per day.  Sustained economic growth has been the key building block of poverty reduction and shared prosperity. During the “MDG era”, about 1 billion people exited extreme poverty. 

Ending poverty in all its forms everywhere lies at the core of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Aid for Trade and actions to integrate developing countries into the trading system will be central to ending poverty — but this will not happen automatically. Aid-for-Trade programmes and policy reforms will need to be designed so that they not only lower trade costs between countries, but also help people living in poverty overcome the constraints they face in benefiting from trade opportunities.

Key questions:

• What have we learned through the Aid-for-Trade Initiative on how to maximize the poverty reduction impact of trade integration? What is the role of trade-related policies, and how to these need to be complemented by policies and interventions in other areas? What lessons can we draw on the specific topics that are the focus of this event?
• What next in Aid for Trade to ensure that the poverty reduction impact of integration into global trade is maximized? What policy agendas can be pursued at the national, regional and global levels to maximize the impact of trade integration in reducing poverty?
• How can action at the global level most effectively complement interventions and policies at the country level?

Panel:

• Fulbert Amoussouga-Gero, WTO-Chair Holder, University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin, former member of UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on the post-2015 Development Agenda
• Paul Walters, Deputy Director, Trade for Development, Department for International Development, UK
• Anabel González, Senior Director, Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice, World Bank Group
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• Robert Koopman, Chief Economist and Director, Economic Research and Statistics Division, World Trade Organization

Question and answer session
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