Seattle Symposium on International Trade Issues in the First Decades of the Next Century, December 1999: reports on meeting

 Highlights the implications of COVID-19 on small scale cross-border trading in Kenya and Uganda. They find that Kenya-Uganda border restrictions are also reducing the work of informal border traders. This will have a knock on effect on the Ugandan economy, where informal trade accounts for 25-40% of intra-regional trade.

The global Covid-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on trade across the world. Value chains and trade have slowed down, or even been brought to a halt, via several channels:

Following the launch of the Aid for Trade (AfT) initiative in 2005, donor spending on interventions to promote developing country trade has grown rapidly (UNECA & WTO, 2017: p.3).

The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Forum for Regional Cooperation’s (BCIM) Economic Corridor (EC) initiative, a complex entanglement between security, economic and national interest, exemplifies Foreign Secretary Jaishankar's statement.

The rise and relevance of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) cannot be overstated. BRICS constitutes  the  most  prominent  emerging economies with substantial influence on world affairs – both political and economic.