Hundreds of high-level business leaders, policymakers and other influential thinkers are set to exchange views on trends shaping global trade, investment and development, and explore how they can contribute to achieving the United Nations' new development agenda.

 

The two-day 15th World Export Development Forum (WEDF) kicks off today (October 20)in Doha, Qatar. 

 

Hosted by the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the Ministry of Economy and Commerce of the State of Qatar through the Qatar Development Bank (QDB), the event will be a forum for doing business, with facilitated business-to-business (B2B) meetings for companies from around the world to find new partners.

 

Under the theme ‘Sustainable trade: Innovate, invest, internationalize,’ the event comes on the heels of the adoption by the world‘s governments of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. 

 

This new global agenda seeks to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 while stimulating socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic growth. It specifically calls for encouraging the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to boost job creation and economic opportunities for all.

 

The speakers in Doha will address the unique challenges and opportunities faced by SMEs in developing countries and economies in transition. 

 

They will point to how these businesses, which account for the bulk of employment around the world, can be empowered to use international trade and investment to drive growth and job creation.

 

The event will consist of four plenary sessions and four parallel breakout sessions, alongside structured and informal B2B meetings aimed at enabling participating SMEs to meet potential customers, suppliers, and investors.

 

The first plenary, ‘Unlocking the potential of the post-2015 development agenda’, will analyse the role of trade, and specifically SMEs, in achieving the Global Goals.

 

The second plenary session, ‘SME competitiveness: Why it matters’, follows last week’s launch of ITC’s new flagship research publication, the ‘SME Competitiveness Outlook’.  Drawing on the report’s findings, it will explore how bolstering SME productivity and competitiveness contributes to inclusive growth, and spotlight the constraints that SMEs in developing country regions and countries must overcome to trade in regional and world markets.

 

A parallel breakout session on ‘Innovation and entrepreneurship: Trends that shape the trade landscape’ will look at how technological innovations and an interconnected world have reshaped the entrepreneurial landscape, while a second breakout session, ‘Innovative funding to internationalize SMEs’, will look at how access to finance continues to be a major obstacle to growth and internationalisation for SMEs in developing countries, and how to overcome this.

 

Plenary three, ‘Driving diversification through trade and investment’, will set the tone of WEDF’s second day. This session will explore the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in enabling developing country businesses to upgrade technology and integrate into international value chains and supply and distribution networks.

 

The ‘Halal standards: Challenges and opportunities’ will look at standards and product certification for halal foods. A new publication and tool will be launched to help policymakers, standards-setting organizations and SMEs take full advantage of this fast-growing market. Special focus will be placed on the unique location of Doha, an economic hub of the Muslim world, to become a centre for halal trade.

 

Taking its cue from the fact that intra-Arab trade stands at only five per cent of the region’s total, once oil is excluded, a breakout session on ‘Regional integration: From rhetoric to action’ will look at how Arab countries can overcome non-tariff measures and other barriers to scale up trade. 

 

Meanwhile, ‘Trade in services: Tapping the potential of tourism’ will explore business models and development implications for promising market segments such as educational tourism, business tourism, heritage and culture, medical tourism and film tourism.

 

On both days of the conference, the WEDF team has arranged one-on-one matchmaking sessions for high-potential buyers and sellers, in line with the business needs of each company. This year's B2B meetings will target SMEs operating in the tourism, specialty foods, and plastics and packaging sectors, allowing participants to take advantage of the Gulf countries’ unique position to explore new business opportunities.

 

The session summaries will be published on the WEDF website at the end of each day. Those unable to attend can follow the conference live via the Twitter feeds of ITC and QDB, and are invited to join the debate using the hashtag #WEDF15. - TradeArabia News Service