Contributor: Marushia Gislén, Secretary's Department
Moderator: Jianhai Li, Secretary, IMF
Speaker: Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, Secretary-General, UNCTAD
Many developing countries experience slowing industrialization long before they have converged to advanced economy income levels. Should they focus on industrialization or direct their efforts towards facilitating robotization, digitalization, automation? While this could bring higher growth, it also comes with challenges, such as ensuring that growth is sustainable and inclusive. Mr. Lin set the stage for the discussion and underlined that the IMF and UNCTAD may have different remedies, but have the same goal of achieving prosperity for all countries.
Key Points:
- E-commerce and robotics. The e-commerce market has been growing at rates beyond that of traditional trade. While developing countries are still lagging on e-commerce, this is the next step of globalization and cannot be ignored. Kituyi noted that the phenomenon of robotics is mainly concentrated in developed countries and that robot-driven production still only accounts for a small part of the global production of major manufacturing firms. He also noted that the industrial use of robots has implications for global value chains and outsourcing.
- Supporting LIDCs. The first critical step is to identify infrastructure gaps impeding the development of e-commerce and digitalization. UNCTAD organizes annual meetings in Geneva, encouraging dialogue between firms, industries, and regulators to identify issues and potential solutions. There are additional efforts to connect the consumers of e-commerce—predominantly the young—with policy makers. Kituyi urged a change in the model of ODA to focus on de-risking investment in LIDCs to further digitalization and technological development, and catalyze digital inclusion.
- Market concentration and privacy concerns. Kituyi noted that the increasing market concentration of electronic platforms adversely impacts the ability of smaller businesses to compete. An important concern is how to deal with privacy issues in an environment where voluntarily provided personal information is used for commercial or political gains. In addition, there is a need to discuss the distribution of revenues between the provider, platform, and regulator. He cautioned that many developing countries have no laws to protect privacy and that there is a growing sense that technology and digitalization can be disruptive.
