CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS

The increasing international fragmentation of production that has occurred in recent decades has challenged conventional perceptions of trade and investment. There is a new understanding that traditional statistics may not best facilitate optimal policy measures and that sound policymaking requires more adequate and accurate data. The OECD, WTO and UNCTAD have started to provide new metrics and will extend their work to better assess the impact of GVCs on trade, investment, development, growth and jobs.

The message from on-going work presented in this report is clear: Global value chains are the consequence of and depend upon open markets, and need to be complemented with appropriate policy frameworks including for strengthening of productive capacities. The fragmentation of production in GVCs should also be accompanied by at least a changed emphasis in trade and investment policies which takes more actively into account the growing interdependence between policy stances of exporters and importers, host countries and home countries. Moreover, ambitious economic integration agreements that more coherently cover all dimensions of market access (not least access to key inputs) can help countries to maximise the gains from production sharing. At the same time, open and stable trade and investment policies need to be accompanied by a range of other sound policies to pave the way for any economy to access, and benefit from, those value chains. One of the key challenges remaining is to properly understand and address the obstacles to such participation in those economies, particularly some developing economies, which are currently less able to access and benefit from value chains. Finally, international competition in GVCs will entail adjustment costs, as some activities grow and others decline, and as activities are relocated across countries. Policy needs to facilitate the adjustment process, including through well-designed productive capacity-building measures, environmental sustainability and labour market, social and competition policies, and through investment in education and skills, as well as infrastructure and technology.

International co-operation can help to reap the full benefits of GVCs and to ensure that new strategies of firms benefit all. Opportunities exist within the G20 structural policy agenda to address some of the policy challenges. The work initiated by the OECD and WTO, together with a network of international organisations and partner institutions, including UNCTAD, should be strengthened and mainstreamed. OECD is ready to establish and maintain an observatory that would invite widespread collaboration on future work related to measuring trade in value added terms and the implications of GVCs, as proposed during the G20 Russian Presidency – OECD Stocktaking Seminar on GVCs held in Paris on 29 May 2013.

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