 this panel on trade across regions that share the Indian Ocean. We're looking about trade across South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. We've all come to acknowledge the fact that trade is a major engine of growth across the world. And many nations have revolutionized their economies through trade. We're going back to Japan, South Korea, and China. So the question we're presenting, we are going to debate or we're going to discuss today, is about how to enhance trade across South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Now these are large economies in terms of the size of the population, but in terms of the share of world trade, there still is a small part, especially South Asia and Africa, is a small part of trade. There's been a large increase in South-South trade, but most of that has been kind of intra-Asia, mostly East Asian economies and Southeast Asian economies, much less South Asia and Africa. And the Middle East is well known for its oil exports. The question is whether we can think of other areas that it could diversify into. We have a great group of speakers to comment on this topic with a lot of experience in this area. To my left, I have Priyanka Mittal, who is the director of KRBL India. I have Vinit Nair, who is the vice chairman and CEO of HCL Technologies. And to my right, I have Mohammad Jaffer, who is the chairman and managing director of Kuwaiti Danish Dairy Company of Kuwait. So we have two representatives from the South Asia side, the India side, and we have Mohammad, who is from the Middle East, and we are missing one of our speakers who would have been from Africa. But I assume we can get some good questions from the audience on this. So the way I want to proceed on this topic is to break it down into three parts, which is first, start with a discussion about the unique opportunities that the region affords, and then speak about the challenges that we face in growing trade across these different regions. And then in the end, talk specifically about best practices and solutions to address these challenges and how to grow trade. So let me come to the opportunities and we start with Priyanka. So Priyanka, you are heading an agro-based company and you have many dealings with the Middle East. You're a big exporter to the Middle East. So maybe you can start with telling us about what you see as some of the unique opportunities that exist for trade across this region in the agro-based sector and in related sectors. Okay. Gita, I'd like to start by saying that there's great opportunities to trade with neighbors, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and I don't think that potential is fully harnessed. I'll start by sharing a statistic that inter-regional trade roughly accounts for 65% of European Union's total trade, 51% for NAFTA, 25% for OSEAN, and 16% for Mercosur. However, the ratio is just 5% for SAFTA, despite excellent infrastructure. So that's a low-hanging fruit that is up for grabs. Now obviously there are a lot of benefits for inter-regional trade, particularly in the SARC area, political stability, labour mobility. You know, culturally we understand them better. We can spec and customize the product better. There's obviously a freight advantage. And recently the issue that has gone out a lot of attention is carbon footprinting. So trading with neighbors actually reduces that substantially. Now a lot of work has happened. India has made a lot of initiative with Pakistan trying to develop inter-regional trade. And in December 2012 last year we signed the MFN and we will see that that area of trade increase in future years. But I think that's a low-hanging fruit. And that should have been done similar to other regions. With regard to the Middle East, you know, India has primarily been a raw materials exporter. So I think there is great opportunity to go up the value chain. I can give you our example as K. Herbiel. Rather than just being a raw materials exporter, we have actually gone into a value addition and we are actually exporting brands. So we are capturing that value addition in India. So there are two aspects to the issue here. One is to actually not only raise the value of trade but also raise the kind of trade that you do. You know, we can get into more manufactured centric trade, get into more knowledge-based trade, you know, and thereby enhancing not only just being a raw materials provider but actually uplifting the entire value chain and capturing that value in the supply chain. Now what happens is Southeast Asia, exports raw material to, let's say, the West. The West does the value addition and then it is exported to the Middle East. In that sense, then the value is captured by people there. So if you actually directly evaluate the product, that source of origin, where the raw material is generated, you will actually capture significantly more value. That's great. So it sounds like besides having comparative advantage in a particular product, you want to be able to move up the value chain. Absolutely. And come up with more branded products for which you then, you know, have a significant market share in these different regions. So I want to move on to beneath, you're in a completely different industry. You're in IT and for you, from your perspective, are these regions a market for you as a destination or are you basically sourcing skilled manpower to fuel your service trade with North America and Europe? Before answering that question, Keith, if I can step back and answer that, where is the opportunity I see, right? Most of us actually are existing with the western hat on our head, assuming that's the market which we are all focused on and we need to produce either raw material or good services for the western market. And each one of us are doing our own bit in our own way and without looking at the collaborative enterprise and what potentially it could do for us to even pursue that agenda. EU is a very strong example of intra-trade base growth. That means how do you trade within that region so that you can grow. However, this experiment could be a different experiment, which is where your question is going. So what you can trade within, is that an attractive opportunity? Yes and no, because the opportunity in the west is far bigger than the opportunity within this region. However, what you can do collaboratively to leverage and deliver better value and better services to the west is a very interesting opportunity. Most of the people in west see a risk in a single country of sourcing, whether it is a supply chain or sourcing or IT or whatever it is. And therefore they seek multi-country collaboration, whether it is India in Philippines, Malaysia in India or Middle East in India or South Africa in India increasingly. And when you do that, the question is do you appear as one or do you appear as virtually two separate companies, which are trying to deliver to the same customer. And so far, because of the trade barriers, we appear as two separate companies in two separate countries and therefore what we have on offer to US or Europe is not very cohesive and therefore it's not a single value proposition. So the big opportunity in my mind is a billion people in South Africa, a billion in India, you know, half a billion all around, is the human capital we have. That's the bigger raw material we have in our age, 50% of the age is less than 30% of this population. So how can we leverage this raw material and how can we collaborate collectively and raise the level of this raw material to deliver higher value added services to the West and redefine globalization. Today globalization is all about West going to East and therefore you talk to any Western company, their biggest opportunity is going East. So how can we redefine globalization about East going to West by better collaboration and leveraging these two and a half, a billion people to be able to pursue the dreams which all of us have in the emerging market. That's great. So it looks like in terms of opportunities we've raised two sets. One is about the market itself as a source, as a market to sell to and the point you raised about leveraging the skilled manpower in the region not to sell to sell to the markets in that region but to sell to markets outside. So let me come to you, Mohammed. What in your opinion are the opportunities that cooperation in this region can bring about? I think when you look at the region and what it has to offer, it has a lot to offer, it has people to offer. You have the middle classes of Africa and India alone are the new consumers, the Canadian Prime Minister yesterday said he's not waiting for Doha to happen. They're having bilateral agreements quickly. They're interested in India. Energy, Hungary, India. You also have what we were talking about the Indian Ocean but there is what lies beyond the Indian Ocean, beyond the coast. So you've got China, you've got Central Africa and just the shores of Africa. So it has people to offer markets. Tackling trade was addressed by a number of organizations. You have ASEAN, you have IOC, the Indian Ocean, you have the Gulf Corporation Council within the Gulf. They all have existed for many years to facilitate trade within those particular regions. And now we have a very wide brush where we want those various countries around the Indian Ocean to cooperate. I think it's a great challenge. I think first for the opportunity to happen, you need to refocus. Who's going to, like the Canadians, coming with a small trade delegation to a specific country? I think the execution mechanism for these opportunities to take place has to be revisited. The trade within the GCC, for example, in the Gulf countries is nil and I think you have to examine if you're unable within a sub-region to trade, why is it that you're unable to trade within the sub-region and is it ambitious to trade outside the region? It's easy to sell oil because there's demand for oil today but what lies beyond the obvious? So the opportunities here in India, infrastructure in Africa, infrastructure again, and agriculture. So you've got the people but also you have the means to produce food. I think that these are priorities, bisector priorities by country that need to be identified to get the ball rolling. And I think the new model of public-private partnerships and the change in mindset must start to exist so that these opportunities that have existed for a long time, the populations didn't appear yesterday, the arable land didn't just appear yesterday, they've been here for a long time. How do you turn that into a reality? This is a good point to start bringing up the specific challenges. We all agree that the opportunity exists. If I could add one more opportunity here because what you're saying is absolutely right. I think what's happening is that over a period of time, because of this whole western mindset coming east in a very dominant way, we don't think cooperation, we think consumption. And therefore our mindset is how can we consume more like the west? And what is actually needed to solve either the social problems or economic problems or diversity problems is more local solutions, more innovative solutions. And there are huge number of innovative solutions, whether you take the Jaipur Fort on one side or you take low-cost education, we will never have the teachers which we would need. A whole lot of solutions are there, whether they are in South Africa or India and Middle East. I think if there was an agreement of sorts to try and cover some of the social issues by leveraging the local innovation we have, people will start seeing the benefit of leveraging innovations from each other and the commerce will come later. Otherwise what's happening is that we are trying to force-fit the western solutions even to social problems. You take water, you take irrigation, you take all those medicines, you take all those, we are trying to ape the west to try and solve a local problem which is not going to be possible. So even at the government level, if not the trade, trade is a very sensitive topic in terms of what you will and what you're not and it needs infrastructure. But even if you try and encourage social innovation labs, frugal innovation labs to try and encourage solution of social problems by leveraging capability from each other, I think that conversation within the region will start. We're talking here about having regional cooperation, not just purely trade-based, but in terms of transfers of social technology, solutions that address problems that are specific to the region that you won't find solutions in the west for. But it sounds like these are compliments. To some extent, by actually improving the social infrastructure in the region, the physical infrastructure in the region and by transferring technologies across the region, you might actually enhance trade also in the process. And so these are the kinds of opportunities that we are thinking about. And so we all agree there are great opportunities, but still if you look at the numbers in terms of trade in the region, we're talking about small numbers. And so let's try to get a little specific about what we think are the challenges to growing trade. Now, we know that there are kind of explicit barriers to trade versus tariffs. And in fact, if you look at the tariff barriers between the north and the south, they're actually less severe than across countries in the south. And then of course there are non-tariff barriers, which is the physical infrastructure that doesn't exist, financial capital, things of those kinds. So let me go around and get your opinion on what you think are the specific challenges to growing trade and more regional cooperation in this region. Well, I'd like to start by saying that I think one of the biggest challenges is non-harmonization of standards. So let's say when you deal with Africa as a continent, and you go to Kenya versus Tanzania versus Nigeria, South Africa, the standards are vastly different for any product, whether it's agriculture or non-agriculture manufactured products. And by the time you get the safety data done, by the time you get the compliance is done, you're losing time and you're losing an opportunity to trade. So there needs, and you're actually incurring resources, you're incurring time, you're incurring money in trying to seek those approvals. And that phenomena is not an Africa-specific phenomena. That happens even in SAC, it happens in OSEA, it happens in the West. I think there needs to be greater collaboration now regionally to uniformly apply the standards. There should be just one body that regionally does it. That way you gain a lot of efficiency in implementing and making trade seamless. I think that is the first constraint. The second, of course, is mobility of labour, which I think, Vinit, is something that you'd probably, an issue that's very close to your heart, is mobility of labour. And I think that also is a restrictor to trade. I think one of the big benefits of the European Union was uniform skills enhancement and mobility of labour, which actually improved the value and the value of trade, the volume and the value of trade. And I think with India or the Middle East, India and Africa, that's an open opportunity, that's our programmes. From skills enhancement perspective, from visa perspective and mobility perspective. The third, of course, which is actually very, very inherent to agriculture, is protection of intellectual property. There is this great intellectual property that exists in South, whether it's rice, it's silk, it's tea, Ghana coffee, Kenyan tea. I think that intellectual property needs to be jointly registered so that the farmers or the enablers of that trade benefit from that value rather than somebody which is more developed, trying to grow it and sell it cheaper. So thereby destroying the entire value. So those are the three primary things that I'd like to say. Great, so Vinit, what do you think? I think I completely agree with all three and I can see progress being made on harmonising of standards. Mobility of labour sounds like a much tougher proposition but curious to know what you think. Yeah, so I completely agree with what she has said but let me ask the question in terms of why it is not happening and go at challenges from that point of view. I think the start point is that the small businesses are the real beneficiary of this trade because large corporations somehow find markets across the world and somehow sustain growth and somehow have enough cash to be able to take the difficult path of going west. The small businesses, if you really see the India-Pakistan agreement came out of a huge amount of small businesses putting adequate pressure on their local governments to say that it makes sense to have this trade barrier lifted and therefore we have almost a 50 or 100% growth year on year with Pakistan. So the first question is, do the small businesses in the respective countries have a voice in the governments or is it dominated by the big business houses? That's the first part. If the small businesses don't have a voice, do industry forums have a voice? In this particular case in Pakistan case, the industry forum had a voice. So what industries are going to benefit out of it and do industry forums of the two countries see eye to eye and therefore do they have the voice in bringing about a change in the government policies in all the sectors which you talked about? What is really happening is the industry forums are also weak in the emerging markets. They are very strong in the developed markets because they are well contributed to. We hate to contribute to industry forums. We do not see a value in industry forums and industry forums do not produce too much return for the businesses and therefore they are weak. I think growing the industry forums, specifically in this region, specifically for local trades, specifically for small businesses is the other challenge we face. I think the third issue on global mobility, I don't think we should brush that aside in terms of the fact that it is difficult to do. The European example which you said is right standard is standing in front of us in terms of if we only take one decision, which is global mobility, all the stuff which you are talking about will automatically happen because people will start moving around, innovation will start moving around, people will start collaborating because this is a big consumption market and if the consumer gets together, then the buyer will have to behave himself, whether it is IP, whether it is, those are big issues there and that collaboration will either happen through policy or trade agreements or it could happen through global mobility and if we ease the global mobility as it is the global mobility between UK and US is very, very easy, within EU is very easy, if we just take that decision of global mobility at the educated level, let's forget the label market at the educated level, if we have good global mobility standards, I think a lot of these challenges, which appear challenges will start solving themselves. I think it is answering these three questions which would try and solve some of the issues which Prankar is saying, so in my mind these are the challenges, that we are focused on that, let's focus on the cause of why are we not able to do what she is saying, despite the fact it looks so obvious for us to do. It is interesting, neither of you brought up the Tad of Badi as being a big constraint, that they are actually, you seem to be referring to more of the softer constraints on trade rather than the more direct observable, measurable constraints, do you not see those as being constraints? I think that is an obvious constraint, that is I think the one thing that has hampered trade for a very long time, but you know that something that's happened, has existed for a very long time, there has been a lot of discussion about it, but because of reasons of internal security, with regard to food, with regard to labour, protecting smaller industries, those tariffs entail. I think recently also those tariffs have become a tool for negotiation, there's a lot of give and take that happens and I think artificially keeping the tariffs high, there's a certain give which the developer does, in lieu for something take from the developing world. I think there's a bigger agenda, tariff is a very politically sensitive, economically sensitive, social sensitive issue, and to wish that it completely goes away, I think is just wishful thinking. It's not going to happen in the foreseeable future, economics has argued the benefits of competitive advantage, et cetera, for removing barriers, but that has only been discussion, what is the solution really? If you look at a broad period of time, I think the world has recognised that you need to have free trade and so you have absolutely seen a cut in tariffs across time, so I think we're moving in the right direction, but you have specific experience, I know that you were interested in sugar exports from Africa and the specific problem there was about tariffs, could you speak to that? I think tariffs, the hard and the hard tariffs are clear, it's 20% if you're importing the soft tariffs, even sometimes when there is not a hard tariff, are worse because they cannot be measured, but they're very real, the example from Africa is one, is a case in point, but also in Jordan we try to export some food products to Jordan, officially there is no tariff or there is a particular tariff which is disguised as something else, but then the procedures and the red tape upon arrival, basically once you've experienced that one short twice you lose the appetite for exporting. Tanzania produces sugar, we're interested in buying some sugar from Tanzania, I was there recently, this is why this was fresh, they've banned the export of sugar, they do not allow sugar to be exported, the sugar exporters want to export the sugar, but the government, and I think this is one of the problems there is a protectionist gene that seems to proceed the free trade gene in many countries this needs to be addressed, especially in hard times when there is hardship, this protectionist instinct comes in and you don't want to export rice, you don't want to export sugar, if we want to export food stuff, not oil to India, there are times, there are barriers that don't allow that, I think the challenges are fragmentation, it's too disparate a bunch around this Indian Ocean Rim, the priorities of the Indian PM are different from the priorities of the South African PM, the Australian PM or the Jordanian PM, how do you deal with this fragmentation the mindset is important I think believing that in trade lies the solution, if that is not at the core it will be doomed, like Doha has been doomed, it will get nowhere the initiative at the end of the day will be left to the private sector but is it possible, and this also has to do with mindset, is there trust, does government trust business does business trust government I think there is a worldwide crisis of trust that translates into everything that we do today the consumer doesn't trust the media, doesn't trust government doesn't trust corporation and until there is trust between the business community the politicians internally, before you go regionally establish that at home and then try to export it but there are, I will be moving to solutions later, there are solutions, it's not that this is a problem without solutions but my reading is that you need to reduce the complexity people within India complain of how difficult it is to do trade from state to state, harmonization not only of standards, but harmonization of taxes it's a nightmare, the time that it takes to do business within if that is softened if it is possible to be a European union, but as a federation of the states you have it from state to state you have different taxes there are differences, but there are major differences that force a newcomer to really look at the system and say this is totally foreign to me I need three years just to understand how to navigate the system so reducing the complexity the fragmentation, having a mindset and a coalition of the willing including non-government organizations including a government including the right stakeholders you have to bring to the table the right people, it has to be the right table, it must be the right topic that they're talking about and put some metrics in there to get some deliveries coming out I think this is the so Vinny can you tell us a little bit you've had experience dealing trading and services with different parts of the world, can you give us an example of why is it that much harder to do trade with the countries you're talking about as opposed to say a country in North America or in Europe is there something you could specifically point to as being a clear sense of the differences of doing trade across these different sorts of nations I think the first is the mindset that best is better and doing business with your own do you think that's a mindset and there's nothing I'm going down the line first it does start with the mindset somewhere in our genes since he's talking about genes there's also a gene called a brand gene that means a western brand gene even if it is on the verge of bankruptcy I like to buy that car rather than buy a car of a very profitable local company so it's in our genes and cuts across region the second is when we talk like brothers what is in it for me becomes a very important question to ask and in every conversation it comes up you know it means multiple things some said some unsaid but that becomes a very difficult thing that in every argument in every conversation whether it is with the custom guy whether it is with the government whether it is with the education institution South Africa has a billion people one of the things which we are very interested in is setting up our centers of local development in South Africa and we said we would like to have 10,000 people in five years in South Africa doing software development and that's a commitment we would like to make and the reason is because South Africa will be a very large consumption market on its own the second is that South Africa would also be leveraged by a lot of regions who go into South Africa to try and sell and South Africa will force and export and therefore South Africa is a great destination for us to be so it's a pure commercial logic for us South Africa development of talent education institutions with reference to IT it's quite not there and therefore the task for us if we are serious about it is to how do we engage with education institutions and with the local government to try and set up centers so that the engineers out there we can take them and convert them to learn the business processes and to learn the CMMI and all those standards in software industry so that we can deploy them into our centers and that becomes now there is where the difficulty is that if you have a similar conversation with the state governor in let's say US it's an across the table decision which is the reason we are in Seattle we are in North Carolina but the subsidies are easy tax laws are easy everything is easy you're done and dusted in about 7 days time it's been 3 years with South Africa predominantly because everybody is saying what is in it for you what is in it for me who is going to be the decision maker am I the decision maker is somebody else there is no one decision maker and therefore the concept everybody likes the idea everybody wants to own execute nobody wants to do and I'm sure when you come to India you face the same thing who are you talking to is there one decision maker so I think the biggest challenge in the emerging market is we are not decisive we are biased and we do not have an architecture and a structure where we can take these bold decisions and execute them we can take a decision but we don't know how to execute them and that's I think where the challenge is great so I think we are it sounds like this also tells us what what needs to be done to address the problems and address the fact that there is so little trade in the region so Priyanka let's move on to now the solutions part of the discussion and say ok if you had to think of what in your opinion are the important steps that need to be undertaken to solve these challenges what would they be well I'd like to say that I think in order to enhance trade or attract trade investment I think investment needs to be created I think Africa is really a forerunner in that sense creating favourable investment climate for people to come and invest I think what happens is when you do that to build a lot of ancillary industry also around it I think Singapore actually is a leading example they had a very small domestic market but they actually brought in a lot of trade through preferential tax regime preferential interest regime investment regime and I think that's a model that can be taken globally the second is governance factor which we need to touch upon I think that's the need of the hour I think investments particularly with regard to trade people shy away when there is a corruption fear and then there is a governance fear ineffective judiciary so I think these are broad policy measures which need to be implemented if trade needs to be honest the inherent fears which you mentioned psychological fears of dealing with Africa is corruption so I think if that is done I think trade would benefit significantly with regard to I think just the logistics of trade I think the discussion wouldn't be complete the logistics of trade is not improved with regard to port infrastructure I think there is a crying need now to improve that in India but also in Africa because those are the gateways to those countries and second of course roads if somebody wants to set up shop like for us when we invested in Nigeria I mean there were two primary issues there was no infrastructure with regard to roads and there was great insecurity to human life people didn't want to move from India to Nigeria to invest there so I think there are bigger macroeconomic issues they can't be addressed immediately but I think there is something long term implementation measures which need to be kept in mind I want to take questions from the audience but I do want to get both your opinions on solutions so Mohamed quickly if you have a few points just a simple vehicle that I have seen here at the forum of a successful partnership between the private sector government with results with fruits that are on the trees quite quickly and the example that comes to my mind is the water resources group very quickly this was a group that was set up to deal with water shortages worldwide countries like South Africa for example and Jordan to take two specific examples now India recognize they have a water problem but the government on its own doesn't have a clue they don't have the resources needed to fix the problem the forum comes in brings to the table the ride stakeholders they get consultants who know about water in and assess what the issue is but working very closely with the government and with the NGOs on the very local level it's an organization that doesn't cost a lot of money it's a very small enumble but it is proven and it is working so I think it has to be a sort of a triangle business but they have to be willing I think the key ingredient to the solution is being willing and committed I think a couple of suggestions first is warts warts and warts I think we can wish as much as we want we have to link business actions with warts in terms of how would they generate warts and therefore the role of industry forums become very very important they have to link with action with desire and how they are going to link with warts so creation of industry forums which make the linkage happen that's number one which are cross-border not focused on west regional industry forums take an example of the experiment with two experiments which are happening in Tamil Nadu one is on water distribution and democratization of water and the second which is happening is which is buying on E auction all the medicine for the poor which is resulting into a 90% discount take one experiment in South Africa of teaching English to people who do not know English in about three months time how do we bring these experiments together so that on that social platform these get discussed unfortunately there is no regional platform in which these options get discussed and if they start to get discussed at that forum then the forum will start putting pressure on the government to try and do something about it the last is the small businesses the entrepreneurs are the people who bring about the change the big business houses are useless because they already have many options and you don't so they will mumble jumble quite a lot as I'm doing right now but seriously their actions are going to be quite limited and therefore how do we get small businesses excited about it excited about the opportunity and create forums where they can start pushing the government and pushing the other businesses to try and collaborate this will be three ideas for myself I'd like to take some questions from the audience if there are any you'd like to go please my name is Anshu Gaur I had a question if the panellists have examples of where trade is happening and if so why and how because we heard a lot of examples of constraints which are hard constraints soft constraints outside the control of a lot of people here so we certainly have enough successful examples over here so we are extremely successful in both Middle East and South Africa with large houses in developing IT solutions for them to try and make them more competitive because South African and the Middle East entities are seeing a significant advantage we have because we work with a lot of global corporations with banks with oil companies, with mineral companies and therefore we have the capability to be able to execute for them on a turnkey basis at a much lower cost than anybody else can do so the bigger corporations in these countries get it and therefore there is a huge amount of success in this region South Africa business is growing at about 78% year on year, Middle East is going at about 52% year on year so yeah that's success Any other questions? You spoke about setting up forums for entrepreneurs because you think that small companies and entrepreneurs can bring about change could you elaborate on that? The point I was making is that if you are hungry you fix the problem of hunger if you are just had lunch and come and have a conversation on how to fix the poverty issue or the hunger issue you will speak a lot and speak extremely well but you do nothing about it So the question is how do we connect the hungry people who are going to benefit the most out of that cooperation to own the change and that can only happen as individually they are small by collecting them and pulling them together so that collectively they are large and collectively on one side like the trade association in Punjab the traders association pushed the government called large that they are going to gain tremendously out of the Pakistan collaboration so how do we put them in a forum that collectively they suddenly become large and with that large influence A votes and therefore the government policy we similarly engage with the regional other regional entrepreneur organization and how can we make them bigger not just lip service as we are doing right now with more teeth so that they can determine what the association will do and how they will bring the ideas to the association so that it will grow All premise in any transformation whether it was independence of India is how do you connect people with the highest pain with the highest gain if you do that the transformation would happen otherwise we will keep having such intellectual discussions and there will be no action I am Rajiv Sodhi globalization is about resourcing from the best possible source whether it is manpower whether it is material raw material so is there some kind of a common understanding about what are the strengths of each of these regions where one can source what kind of products or services and is there a common kind of understanding between all the members that these strengths are there and we should leverage so you give up the areas which are not our strengths and then leverage strengths from others whether it is minerals it is raw materials so one of the things that happened for the Middle East was the petroleum the discovery of oil and gas so everybody knows that surface to source similarly for tea it is Ceylon and India so are there such things which is commonly known and well adjudiced between government and people and businesses I think it is well understood that Africa is a source of natural resources in India it is labour we have these comparative advantages but Priyanka do you have that I think he is talking about competitive advantages of countries and purely leveraging that but I think what happens is there is an evolution to where the countries are in the value chain West is purely the consumer exporting only intellectual property with technology etc China is taking the lead on manufacturing so it is the manufacture and so what is happening is Africa then become the raw material provider to fuel that growth between China and the West to reach countries and the value chain India I think India is a brilliant example of how we moved up the value chain from just as I mentioned earlier from being a raw materials provider to now the biggest exporter of soft trade IT, oil centres etc etc so I think there is a lot of politics also to it rather than pure economics rationale there is a lot of discussion now on climate change and restricting trade to reduce carbon footprinting I don't know in an era where there is great stress already because of man made barriers because that in itself is a restrictor for trade it is an enabler in one sense because you are forced to increase trade with your neighbour but I think it is a restrictor also because maybe Brazil needs something that India has and because it is very expensive from a great perspective and from an environment perspective to get there so you restrict trade so there is no real answer as far as whether countries have outlined as to what they want to export I think it is purely a fiscal and a political issue what this country wants to do I mean also just to add to that I think to develop a competitive advantage in a particular area you need to have the domestic support for it you need to have the right domestic institutions and so what will be a comparative advantage of the country is going to evolve over time as these institutions develop but there are clear clear opportunities here and strengths of these particular regions in terms of what they can be a global leader any other questions behind me I had a question about my name is Aadash trade has some real costs I think the United States is a great example we have had an election season recently it seems that for a significant segment of the population perhaps the majority real wages have stagnated for a long period of time leading to social and personal costs how do we tackle that aspect of it and I think in India one of the biggest fears and one of the biggest impediments to people sort of reforming and bringing about more change in sectors that employ a lot of people like agriculture so I guess I was interested in thoughts on how we manage that aspect and whether we speak enough on the very real sort of downsides of what can happen this is on a much broader question of whether trade is good in some sense which is beyond this particular regional and I'm going to have somebody else answer this question but let me just throw in my point of view here there are always winners and losers in trade even from a pure economic model perspective the question is whether you can ensure that those who lose are ultimately better off and just to the point about wage inequality and the stagnation of wages in the US with trade but it's more because of skill bias technological change but is there anybody else who would like to add something? I can't speak this in front of Gita because she is an authority on this subject so you should be answering this question but if I could combine the two questions and this question is very relevant in the fact that does the country ask itself what is this competitive advantage let's take India does India ask itself before opening FDI or any other retail or anything like that what is the competitive advantage it is trying to build if it has a billion people and that is the raw material it has is it negotiating global mobility trade agreements while it is opening insurance and retail and other sectors in the country if it is not then you can think about the fact that it will create employment it may improve economy it may but if you were to look at global comparative agreements and saying I have the people I need global mobility you need me for consumption and therefore I will load the trade barriers because that's good for the world and I will do that at the same time I do want you to load the trade barriers on global mobility if that's the negotiated trade agreement which India and South Africa these two countries it's going to be very critical were able to proactively approach I think it's a good for the country if they don't then hope is the best strategy I think this is I think this is critical for India because I think with time the ambition is for India's biggest export is its talent it's human resources now can you export talent to Spain with such high youth unemployment I think this is a very crucial point because looking forward the vision has to be very clear what are our assets are we protecting them long term take a place like Saudi Arabia for example Saudis will not work outside of Saudi Arabia for cultural reasons and the Saudi government is trying to get people to work the Saudis to work within their country by creating jobs which means deleting existing jobs in Saudi Arabia this is a very clear example within this region of one country that has a surplus another country that doesn't want that surplus how do you protect that I think this is why clarity in the vision is very important so that they're choosing the right single propositions the right products to push and the list can go on any other questions I'm sorry one I'm Praveen Nair from New York University I just have a quick question in many of the trade discussions as well as any other reform discussions I actually don't like the word reform because it kind of feels almost like I've been penalized and sent to the penal system and I need to be reformed I don't understand why we don't use improvement and if you talk to a sociologist or a psychologist they tend to use improvement, change of behavior etc I wonder whether in any of these discussions we actually involve sociologists to help us understand what to do next that's an interesting question I mean everybody gets their voice in this discussion and this is obviously again a much broader question than we're even going past trade we could talk about any reform and language for it but I agree I think the fact any reform has for it to happen there has to be consensus about it and to generate consensus about the reform I think communicating the ideas across ensuring that all beneficiaries understand that they have something to gain from it is important so I think that's a crucial point so we're coming to the end if I can add a point there I think it's an interesting question from a different side of the coin what we have been discussing so far what I call material change change in policy change in trade what I think what Praveen is trying to say is that is it possible for like organizations that they want to bring about a transformation in their future they do what we call continuous improvement they don't come up with a policy and saying suddenly we're going to go east or suddenly we're going to west it's a slow process and it's what I call experimental in nature it's incremental in nature and it is no one decision which leads to a significant change and I think the interesting part to think about in this particular topic is that do we need incremental change rather than one big policy change and can we create those forums for incremental change and is the solution around incremental change rather than one big policy change right would you like to respond to something along those lines would you say that we should have incremental change or should we go in for a big bang reform I think we need both because incremental change bring about those micro improvements that actually fine tune the entire system and I think a big bang such as a policy change which reduce tariff barriers which create a more enabling environment to facilitate trade bring that top end thing so I think it's a function of both I don't think it's an either or but I think continuous improvement is more done by corporates civil society consumers actually I think it's done very organically where in demand supply itself balances it out you know there's continuous improvement in product services and I think government through its policy regulation mechanism you know referential investment climate brings about that top end facilitator role you know for enabling trade okay I think we are running out of time so I want to thank our panelists and it looks like we had a good discussion I think we agree that there are clear opportunities both in terms of markets to sell to and markets to source from that are untapped it's also interesting that one of the things that came up in terms of what needs to be done to grow this trade is actually have to have more forms of discussion sometimes I think we have went too many of those but apparently not enough and it looks like in terms of actually growing this in a significant way the challenges are exactly the same as the challenges of growing these economies which is about actually implementing the change I mean I think everybody again understands what needs to be done but it's hard to get things done when you try to deal with these regions apparently things move very slowly decisions don't get taken but clearly if that can change and that might require consensus at the top of bringing in the right policy changes clearly are large gains from trade in this region and not just trade from an economic point of view but through trans as a social technology that we've already talked about so thank you so much and thank you for your very insightful point