Overview of findings from the Trade in Value Added (TiVA) database and GVC indicators

12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Следующая ⇒

IMPLICATIONS OF GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS FOR TRADE, INVESTMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND JOBS

OECD, WTO, UNCTAD

July 2013

Prepared for the G-20 Leaders Summit Saint Petersburg (Russian Federation) September 2013

Meeting at the Los Cabos Summit in June 2012, G20 leaders noted “… the relevance of regional and global value chains to world trade, recognising their role in fostering economic growth, employment and development and emphasizing the need to enhance the participation of developing countries in such value chains.” The leaders also called on the OECD, WTO, and UNCTAD “to accelerate their work on analysing the functioning of global value chains and their relationship with trade and investment flows, development and jobs, [….] and to report on progress under Russia's Presidency.” The present document responds to that mandate, drawing upon the latest findings in on-going research.

Table of Contents

Background............................................................................................................................. 6

Part I. GVCS and trade in value added.................................................................................... 9

1. Overview of findings from the Trade in Value Added (TiVA) database and GVC indicators..... 9

2. Trade policy implications................................................................................................ 13

The cost of protectionism is higher in the context of global value chains.................................. 13

Multiple border crossings put more emphasis on trade facilitation........................................... 14

Non-tariff measures raise specific concerns for GVC participation........................................... 15

Reducing inefficiencies in services markets enhance the competitiveness of all firms................. 16

New competition issues arise with GVCs.............................................................................. 16

Trade agreements have to cope with the new reality of business.............................................. 17

3. The importance of complementary policies, starting with skills............................................ 20

Part II. GVCS, investment, and development.......................................................................... 21

1. GVCs and investment..................................................................................................... 21

Investment decisions of MNEs impact on patterns of value added trade in GVCs...................... 21

Investment in GVCs can generate development benefits, but these are not automatic:
policies matter................................................................................................................... 22

2. Key policy considerations................................................................................................ 25

Whether or not actively to promote GVCs is a strategic choice for policy makers...................... 25

The broader investment policy framework remains important to benefit from GVCs................. 28

Conclusions and next steps...................................................................................................... 29

Highlights · The growth of global value chains (GVCs) has increased our interdependence: between 30% and 60% of G20 countries’ exports are comprised of imported inputs or are used as inputs by others. · The income from trade flows within GVCs has doubled between 1995 and 2009: for China it has increased 6-fold, India 5-fold and Brazil 3-fold. · Income growth means more job growth: in Germany jobs associated with GVCs have doubled to about 10 million jobs between 1995 and 2008. · Trade facilitating measures are vital to successful participation in GVCs; trade cost reductions from practical and relatively inexpensive actions could be as high as 16% for some developing countries. · The role of efficient and competitive services sectors is also crucial: services account for 42% of exports (in value added terms) from G20 economies and more than 50% for some countries. · GVCs strengthen the case for multilateral market opening, as barriers between third countries, including various non-tariff measures, upstream or downstream can matter as much as barriers put in place by direct trade partners. · Open, transparent and predictable trade and investment policies need a range of flanking policies to ensure benefits from GVCs are inclusive and widespread. In some less developed economies there remains much work to be done to address specific obstacles to effective participation in GVCs. · Overcoming obstacles to GVC participation can pay big dividends; developing economies with the fastest growing GVC participation have GDP per capita growth rates 2% above average. · Multinational Enterprise (MNE) coordinated GVCs account for 80% of global trade. But it is also estimated that the contribution of local firms is very significant (in the range of 40-50% of export value added). · GVCs can be an important avenue for developing countries to build productive capacity where local firms can capture a significant share of the value added: but technology dissemination, skill building and upgrading are not automatic and require significant investment. · Individual countries will want to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of proactive policies, carefully tailored to the country’s specific situation and coherent with its overall development strategy. · A structured approach would include embedding GVCs in industrial development policies, in particular creating an environment conducive to trade and investment and building productive capacities in local firms and skills in the local workforce. · Environmental, social and governance frameworks are needed, with strengthened regulation, enforcement, and capacity-building support to local firms for compliance. Well-designed and enforced competition policy has an important role to play. · The OECD’s Policy Framework for Investment and UNCTAD’s Investment Policy Framework for Sustainable Development provide broad guidance on improving the investment environment. · Multilateral co-operation can contribute much to ensuring an overall trade and investment policy climate conducive to sustainable GVC growth, avoiding “beggar thy neighbour” policies, and addressing specific development policy concerns in today’s more interconnected world. · More specifically, the G20 structural policy agenda provides a basis to address the policy challenges noted in this joint report from OECD-WTO-UNCTAD. At the same time, much remains to be learned about the implications for countries at different stages of development and for firms of various sizes and structures. OECD-WTO-UNCTAD, with an expanded network of partner institutions, will strengthen collaboration on these issues, and are ready to report to G20 Leaders on progress in 2014.

BACKGROUND

Global value chains (GVCs) have become a dominant feature of world trade and investment, encompassing developing, emerging, and developed economies. The whole process of producing goods, from raw materials to finished products, is increasingly carried out wherever the necessary skills and materials are available at competitive cost and quality. The international fragmentation of production is driven by changes in the business and regulatory environment, new technologies, shifts in corporate thinking and firm strategies, and the systematic liberalisation of trade and investment over the past two decades.

In this new landscape of global production networks, policymakers have to close the gap between traditional rulemaking and the reality of business. The OECD and WTO are currently undertaking comprehensive statistical and analytical work that aims to shed light on the scale, nature and consequences of international production sharing. UNCTAD has also undertaken significant new work, particularly on the developmental aspects and the link with investment.

The novelty of this work is that it takes into account flows of intermediate goods and services and identifies in which countries and industries value is added along the value chain. GVCs are often coordinated by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) and a significant share of cross-border trade in intermediate and final goods and services takes place within their network of affiliates. But the GVC perspective also encompasses arm’s length trade with independent buyers and suppliers, including the domestic part of the value chain where small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) are involved in the production of inputs that ultimately reach foreign consumers embodied in final goods and services.

The growing fragmentation of production across borders has important policy implications. It highlights the need for countries wanting to reap the gains from value chain participation to have open, predictable and transparent trade and investment regimes as tariffs and other unnecessarily restrictive non-tariff measures impact foreign suppliers, international investors, and domestic producers. It also highlights the need to invest in skills, productive capacity, and infrastructure, as well as the need to address the specific challenges of developing countries, both those that are already participating in production networks but wish to increase domestic value addition and retention and those that are not yet participating in global production networks.

The emergence of GVCs can be observed by looking at how countries increasingly rely on foreign inputs for their own firm exports which may then be further processed in partner countries. Figure 1 illustrates this with a GVC participation index that captures these two dimensions. Between 30% and 60% of G20 countries’ exports consist of intermediate inputs traded within GVCs. Comparing 2009 with 1995, GVC participation has increased in almost all G20 economies, and particularly in China, India, Japan and Korea.

The spread of GVCs has been enabled by technological advances that have reduced trade and co-ordination costs. The container ship or the jet engine, for example, have decreased transport costs and facilitated the movement of goods and people. The development of ICT technologies has also been an important driver in the emergence of GVCs as the co-ordination of activities across countries also involves high costs for companies. Such costs were substantially reduced with the Internet and more reliable communication infrastructures.

Figure 1. GVC participation, 1995 and 2009

Source: OECD (2013). The index is calculated as a percentage of gross exports and has two components: the import content of exports and the exports of intermediate inputs (goods and services) used in third countries’ exports.

The expansion of the operations of MNEs through foreign direct investment (FDI) has been a major driver of growth of GVCs, as illustrated by the close correlation between FDI stocks in countries and their GVC participation. The presence of foreign affiliates is clearly an important factor influencing both imported contents in exports and participation in international production networks.

Policies played their role through successive rounds of trade liberalisation for goods and services and international investment arrangements. Specific agreements, such as the Information Technology Agreement, also supported the spread of ICT technologies. Figure 3 provides a broad measure of trade costs encompassing both policy and non-policy related costs, and highlights that between 1995 and 2009 these costs have been significantly reduced in G20 economies.

Figure 2. FDI and GVC participation, developed and developing countries, 1990-2010

Source: UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2013 – GVCs: Investment and Trade for Development.

Figure 3. Average bilateral trade costs for goods and services, 1995=100

Source: OECD Inter-Country Input-Output tables. Trade-weighted average for G20 countries based on years 1995, 2000, 2005, 2008 and 2009. Bilateral trade costs are indirectly inferred from observable trade data.

PART I.

GVCS AND TRADE IN VALUE ADDED

Overview of findings from the Trade in Value Added (TiVA) database and GVC indicators

Trade in value added describes a statistical approach used to estimate the sources of value that is added in producing goods and services. It recognises that growing global value chains means that a country's exports increasingly rely on significant intermediate imports and, in turn, value added by industries in upstream countries. For example, a motor vehicle exported by country A may require significant parts, such as engines, seats, etc. produced in other countries. In turn these countries will use intermediate inputs imported from other countries, such as steel, rubber, etc., to produce the parts exported to A. The trade in value added approach traces the value added by each industry and country in the production chain and allocates the value added to these source industries and countries.

The TiVA database provides clear evidence of the increasing international fragmentation of production. In most G20 economies, the domestic content as a share of gross exports has decreased between 1995 and 2009 (Figure 4). Different levels are observed across countries, since the importance of domestic value added is determined by a variety of factors, including the size of the country, the economic structure and the export composition. It is worth noting that despite the heterogeneity in GVCs across products and industries, a lower domestic content is seen in most countries. For countries where the domestic content has increased, this can generally be explained by a composition effect. These countries export more products in industries where the fragmentation of production is less prevalent (e.g. services industries, extraction activities). A lower foreign content does not mean that these countries became less involved in global value chains.

At the industry level, a high foreign content can be observed in the electronics or transport equipment industries (Figure 5). Typically, these sectors involve long and sophisticated value chains where the production of essential parts and components has been offshored. Companies take advantage of differences in costs, skills and technologies across countries, as well as scale economies related to the specialisation in specific stages of production. The electrical equipment industry is also characterised by lower trade costs because of efforts to remove trade barriers for key technological goods, as exemplified by the WTO Information Technology Agreement.

Figure 4. Domestic content of gross exports, % (2009)