CUTS Daily Bulletin # 04 | October 23, 2025
SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION FORUM
 
This session, organized by the UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as part of UNCTAD16, offered an opportunity to take stock of the evolution of South–South cooperation and to discuss future priorities in the context of rapid technological change, environmental concerns and rising uncertainties that reshape development prospects. The key takeaways from the discussion were:
  1. Beyond Trade to Inclusive Development: South-South cooperation is not just about trade and economic growth but also about sharing expertise and creating job opportunities. The focus must be on how South-South cooperation can help people increase sustainable jobs rather than merely tracking numbers, with regional integration examples like Brazil and Mercosur showing the importance of sharing best practices across borders.
  2. Technological Innovation and Green Transition: Technological innovation will be integral to the multipolar trade world, ensuring products from the global South become part of global markets. There is need for continued transition toward green economy with different perspectives on climate change, addressing energy and water independence, and recognizing that Southern countries suffer disproportionately from climate change consequences.
  3. Data Measurement and Visibility: The global South has been underrepresented due to lack of data, with South-South cooperation being the only major form of development cooperation not systematically measured. Reliable South-South data strengthens complementarity over competition, builds adaptability through continuous transparent cooperation, and provides policy guidance by identifying economic growth areas and gaps requiring intervention.
  4. Coordination and Integration Mechanisms: There is need to move from fragmented modalities to actively create circumstances where the global South working together can shape integration. This requires coordination among governments and with UNCTAD, capacity building, institutional setup, and ensuring countries don't duplicate services without integrating into sovereign integrity but promote integration correctly.
  5. Policy Areas and Strategic Priorities: Deepening South-South trade cooperation requires focus on sustainable value chains, connectivity and border infrastructure, investment agreements, and analytical work with data sharing. Countries must ensure not to blindly replicate North-South cooperation patterns but drive inclusive structures, with initiatives like India's Voice of the Global South Summit providing platforms to express concerns and empower the global South for sustainable futures.

    The key speakers were Luz Maria de la Mora, Kamel Rezig, Deborah Rivas Saveedra, Febrian A. Ruddyard, William Castillo Bollé, Yuefen Li, Stephanie Blankenburg, Pedro Manuel Moreno,  Omar Zniber, César Sánchez Icaza, Carlos Fidel Martín Rodríguez, Vanessa Erogbogbo, Miho Shirotori, Juhara Abdulaziz Al-Suwaidi, Sanjay Kumar Verma, Márcio Lopes Corrêa, Emmanuel Omokhomion, Manuela Vivas.
(Reporting by Priyadarshini Venkatesh, CUTS International, Geneva)
GLOBAL SERVICES FORUM: SERVICES AS AN ENGINE FOR INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
 
This Global Services Forum, organised as part of the 16th session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development held on 23rd October 2025, sought to examine how services can drive inclusive and sustainable economic growth in developing and least developed countries. With services accounting for two-thirds of global GDP, more than half of FDI, and trade in services growing over 5% annually from 2014 to 2024, the forum explored the transformative potential of services as the new export model beyond traditional manufacturing. Given that LDCs represent only 0.17-0.26% of global services trade despite the digital transformation expanding tradability. The key takeaways from the discussion were:
  1. Services as New Development Model: Services have emerged as a more sustainable and futuristic export model compared to manufacturing. Business services are more productive than manufacturing, while non-business services like restaurants create employment possibilities for low-skilled workers. Services like tourism are less environmentally damaging than manufacturing. They contribute $11.7 trillion to the world economy while sustaining cultural heritage and jobs, making services essential for developing economies and livelihoods beyond traditional industrial pathways.
  2. Infrastructure and Digital Investment: Countries emphasised infrastructure as critical for services competitiveness, requiring investment in world-class fibre optical cables, physical connectivity, and digital systems. Laos transformed from landlocked to land-linked through cross-border highway development, boosting exports and attracting new investments, though infrastructure gaps and limited digitalisation increase logistics costs. Angola implemented financial sector transparency, retail banking expansion, digital payments, and mobile banking reforms alongside anti-corruption measures. Panama had 8.3% economic growth with a nine billion export growth in services, including transport, pharmaceuticals, and tourism.
  3. Policy Reforms and Business Environment: Countries showcased comprehensive reform agendas, including Angola's measures to unlock private sector growth through easier market entry, reduced bureaucratic processes, export diversification, and import substitution with human development. Laos developed a national logistics master plan, promoted logistics as a business sector, accelerated digital customs reforms, and invested in human capital to enable inclusive development. 
  4. Regional Challenges and Support Needs: The Caribbean Community, where services represent over 75% of GDP, faces unique vulnerabilities with tourism sectors affected by natural disasters, rising insurance costs making new investment access almost impossible, and significant per capita transportation costs constraining communication. LDCs require targeted support to increase their 0.17% global services trade share through policy options enabling inclusive participation.
  5. Complementarities and Sustainable Tourism: Manufacturing and services must be recognised as complementarities rather than alternatives, with international cooperation needed in trade routes and increased labour absorption from non-business services. UN Tourism emphasised that realising services' full potential requires building certainty through urgent actions, including mobilising blended finance with government, development agencies, and investors collaborating on green infrastructure.

    The speakers were Pedro Manuel Moreno, Luz Maria de la Mora, Rui Miguêns de Oliveira, Julio Moltó, Lattanaphone Vongsouthi, Carla Natalie Barnett, Shaikha Al Nowais, and Kunal Sen.

(Reporting by Mritunjai Kapila, CUTS International, Geneva)
TRADE-RELATED REGULATIONS FOR ECONOMIC INTEGRATION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
 
This UNCTAD16 parallel event explored how data-driven, transparent, and well-designed trade-related regulations—particularly non-tariff measures (NTMs)—can reduce trade frictions while upholding public policy objectives. The session highlighted practical strategies and international experiences aimed at promoting regulatory coherence, facilitating economic integration, and advancing sustainable development. The key takeaways were:
  1. NTMs are essential—but costly without transparency: NTMs protect health, safety, and the environment, yet often impose costs two to four times higher than tariffs, with disproportionate impacts on SMEs, women, youth, LDCs, and vulnerable economies. Greater transparency alone can cut NTM-related trade costs by ~20%, making open, accessible regulatory data a first-order priority.
  2. Data and evidence are the backbone of good regulation: UNCTAD’s TRAINS database and the newly launched, updated NTM dataset equip policymakers and firms with granular, comparable rules. Evidence-based tools help balance public policy benefits with compliance and trade costs.
  3. Domestic good regulatory practice + international standards reduce frictions: Stakeholder engagement, ex-ante/ex-post impact assessments, and science-based SPS/TBT measures anchored in international standards improve predictability. Where full harmonisation is difficult, mutual recognition (of conformity assessments, certificates) and trust-building between competent authorities can unlock market access faster.
  4. Regional integration mechanisms: ASEAN’s experience shows how coordinated digital processes and shared datasets lower compliance costs. In Africa, the AfCFTA’s digital NTB reporting platform, growing mutual-recognition efforts, and EAC common product standards illustrate concrete pathways to identify and resolve barriers as intra-African value chains scale up.
  5. Inclusion, climate, and resilience must be mainstreamed: Women- and youth-led traders and small producers face steeper hurdles meeting SPS/TBT requirements; targeted capacity-building, time-bound NTB elimination matrices, and gender-responsive trade support were highlighted.

    The session featured contributions from H.E. Sofía Boza Martínez, H.E. Syahril Syazli Ghazali, H.E. Clare Kelly, Trudi Hartzenberg, Marcelo Olarreaga and Luz María de la Mora. 

(Reporting by Peter Maundu, CUTS International, Geneva)
UNCTAD16 DIALOGUE WITH CIVIL SOCIETY — REPORT
 
During the UNCTAD16 Dialogue with Civil Society, participants offered constructive but pointed criticisms across several fronts — aimed at strengthening UNCTAD’s effectiveness, independence, and inclusivity. The tone was diplomatic yet candid, reflecting both deep respect for UNCTAD’s legacy and a firm call for renewal. The key strands of criticism were:
  1. Risk of Diluting UNCTAD’s Heterodox Mandate: Several speakers warned that UNCTAD’s distinct analytical identity—its heterodox, development-first approach—appears at risk of being “mainstreamed” into orthodox economic thinking. They urged UNCTAD to resist pressures to conform to the policy lines of Bretton Woods institutions. They stressed that UNCTAD’s value lies in providing independent, alternative analysis rooted in the realities of developing countries, rather than simply delivering technical assistance detached from policy critique.
  2. Fragmentation and Power Imbalances in Multilateralism: Participants argued that the current system enables the disproportionate influence of large economies, especially the U.S., while marginalising developing countries and women in the Global South. They called on UNCTAD to lead in reshaping multilateralism into a fairer, South-centred framework for trade and development.
  3. Insufficient and Inconsistent Civil Society Engagement: CSOs expressed disappointment at the limited institutional channels for engagement during UNCTAD16 compared with past conferences. They noted a loss of institutional memory of past best practices, such as funding civil society participation, organising dedicated CSO events, and including civil society representatives in official panels. Accreditation hurdles were also described as “unnecessarily cumbersome,” discouraging wider participation. Civil society called for a structured and systematic mechanism for engagement between quadrennial conferences—such as an annual Civil Society Forum alongside the Trade and Development Board.
  4. Gender and Trade: Participants urged UNCTAD to return to its transformative feminist economic roots, challenging the global value chains and systemic inequities that keep women at the bottom of production hierarchies.
  5. Weak Political Will to Act on Debt and Structural Reforms: Civil society emphasised that UNCTAD must help generate the political will necessary to transform technical frameworks into tangible reforms.
  6. Narrow Focus on Capacity Building at the Expense of Systemic Change: Some participants cautioned that donor-driven priorities and “capacity-building only” approaches risk depoliticising UNCTAD’s agenda. They urged UNCTAD to balance training and assistance with deeper structural analysis and advocacy—addressing asymmetries in global finance, trade, and investment systems that perpetuate inequality.
  7. Invisibility of UNCTAD’s Research in Global Policy Discourse: Participants argued that UNCTAD must do more to communicate its heterodox analyses in ways that resonate globally, particularly in the North, where its findings could also benefit citizens facing rising inequality.

    Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of UNCTAD, delivered the opening remarks, with Felipe Morgado serving as moderator, and Vicente Paolo Yu, Anita Nayar, and Erico de Melo participating as Lead discussants.

(Reporting by Peter Maundu, CUTS International, Geneva)
STRATEGIC LOGISTICS HUB AND SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES: CATALYSTS FOR TRADE CONNECTIVITY AND GROWTH
 
The session, held on 22 October 2025 and jointly organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Arab Swiss Chamber of Commerce and Industry as part of UNCTAD16, provided a valuable platform for stakeholders to highlight the benefits and best practices of special economic zones (SEZs) across their respective countries. The key insights and takeaways from the discussion are summarized below:
  1. Algeria’s Continental Bridge Role: Algeria's strategic position serves as a critical link between Africa and Europe, with deep-water ports capable of receiving large ships and vessels. The country has launched new maritime channels including with Lagos, Nigeria, to enable African countries to develop imports and exports more efficiently. 
  2. Infrastructure and Technology Transfer: Algeria is ready to help African countries use it as a platform for exporting, focusing on reducing export durations through improved relations with countries like Nigeria. Joint efforts with Switzerland aim to develop infrastructure in African countries, including transfer of technology for railways, fiber optics, and free trade zones. 
  3. Digital Customs Modernization: There is need to create new strategic logistics networks beyond traditional systems, incorporating digital technologies and artificial intelligence to enhance human capacities in customs operations and logistics development across North African countries including Tunisia.
  4. Oman’s Strategic Location and Access: Oman, the second largest GCC country, offers strategic prime location linking Far East and Far West. The Port of Salalah is nearest to African countries with direct channels to USA, while new road networks enhance Arab world connectivity. Oman provides low cost of doing business with minimal registration fees and no taxes in free zones, backed by 47% young population constituting a dynamic workforce. The Oman Public Authority for Special Economic Zones (OPAZ) offers benefits like 100% foreign ownership and up to 30-year investment periods, with agreements spanning EFTA countries, India, GCC, Pakistan, Korea, and ongoing discussions with China and EU.
  5. Multimodal Transport Systems: Countries are developing diverse transportation infrastructure including special free trade zones at airports, railway projects, and oil storage facilities. Djibouti faces challenges from neighboring countries but maintains good networks with Asia, Africa, and EU, emphasizing that law is the summit of justice in facilitating trade relationships.

    The key speakers were representatives from Algeria, Oman and Djibouti like HE Kemal Rezig, Khaled Hanafy, Sheikh Faisal Al-Hinai, Amna Nasser Al-Sharji and Ali Abusedra. 

(Reporting by Priyadarshini Venkatesh, CUTS International, Geneva)
YOUTH FORUM: EMPOWERING YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS FOR INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE TRADE
 
This Youth Forum, organised as part of the 16th session of the UNCTAD held on 23rd October 2025, sought to examine how to empower young entrepreneurs to lead transformation in inclusive and sustainable trade. With youth representing more than 1.5 billion people worldwide and uniquely positioned to perform with courage and conviction, the forum explored challenges facing young entrepreneurs, including access to finance, knowledge gaps, infrastructure barriers, and policy support needs. The key takeaways from the discussion were:
  1. Creating Enabling Environments: Participants emphasised creating spaces for youth to experiment and succeed through comprehensive support systems. Algeria attached great importance to youth by creating specific funding bodies for SMEs and startups and supporting thousands of companies through presidential programs. 
  2. Access to Finance Solutions: Access to finance was identified as a key constraint, highlighting the need for innovative mechanisms to support youth entrepreneurship. Initiatives include trust loan programmes that enhance access to funding and digital payment systems, as well as alternative models such as revenue-based financing and public–private partnerships to foster business growth without equity pressures.
  3. AI-Driven Logistics Innovation: Young innovators demonstrated AI’s potential to transform logistics through predictive and autonomous systems. Discussions emphasized the importance of equipping youth with data analytics skills and problem-solving mindsets to foster responsible, solutions-driven AI. Examples included digital platforms improving pharmaceutical supply chains, stakeholder connectivity, and sustainable last-mile delivery.
  4. Knowledge Access and Capacity Building: Limited knowledge, alongside financial constraints, was identified as a key barrier for youth entrepreneurs. Participants emphasized the need for institutional support and capacity-building through mentorship programmes and partnerships with online platforms offering training in emerging technologies. 
  5. Special Economic Zones and Local Integration: It was noted that while Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in some countries have effectively facilitated innovation and streamlined operations, their impact in many developing economies remains uneven due to financial and policy constraints. A key concern highlighted was the limited interaction between SEZs and local economies, which reduces potential spillover benefits and restricts opportunities for youth entrepreneurship and broader economic inclusion.   
    The key speakers were Pedro Manuel Moreno, Julio Moltó, Ángela Pérez, Alan Chan, André Hoffmann, Ahmad Mohammed A.Y. Al-Sayed, Shaikha Nasser Al Nowais, Boon Heong Ng, Alfonso Líbano Daurella, Rebeca Grynspan and Damon Embling. 

(Reporting by Mritunjai Kapila, CUTS International, Geneva)
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