While addressing the second Voice of Global South Summit, India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal emphasized the imperative for Global South countries to engage in discussions on creating open, secure, trusted, and equitable supply chains. The Global South is generally seen as home to Brazil, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and China, which, along with Nigeria and Mexico, are the largest Southern states in terms of land area and population.
His speech shed light on the vulnerability of global supply chains amid the continued disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and geopolitical tensions, underscoring the fragility of global supply chains.
“With respect to the global South, the first need is to identify global value chains, where each of the countries could focus on not only increasing their participation but also improving the quality of their participation by moving up the value chain,”
Piyush Goyal
Goyal acknowledged the monumental challenges faced in food and energy security, cost of living, and achieving sustainable development goals due to these disruptions. He called for collaborative efforts to enhance the resilience of supply chains, making them open, secure, trusted, stable, and equitable.
During India’s G-20 presidency, the adoption of the G20 generic framework for mapping global value chains (GVCs) was pivotal. Goyal explained that the framework aims to integrate Global South countries into GVCs and facilitate their upward movement in the value chain to foster prosperity.
Identifying global value chains and improving participation quality were highlighted as priorities. Goyal emphasized the importance of digitalizing trade documents, pointing out the G20’s adoption of 10 high-level principles for the digitalization of trade documents. He noted that implementing electronic bills of lading could result in substantial savings in direct costs.
