Opportunities
There exists a reinforcing relationship between reducing risks for MNCs, adding value in GVCs, increasing diversity through the participation of SMEs, and the transference of innovation and technology, enabled by the development of integrity global standards.
Ensuring integrity in GVCs has become imperative, and this is not likely to change in a more environmentally and socially conscious world. If anything, integrity risks for MNCs and integrity demands for SMEs are likely to increase in the coming decades, and they must work at the same time to address them. Building integrity in GVCs is thus crucial for the expansion of the global economy via reducing risks and promoting diversity.
However, current standards are often focused on specific issues at play in a GVC, fragmenting the compliance operations of MNCs and SMEs, and making it more onerous and complex.
In this context, the Global Trade Professionals Alliance (GTPA) in partnership with Bloomberg New Economy Solutions, is collaborating with a coalition of partners and stakeholders in 2020 to work toward the development of an overarching standard to build integrity in GVCs that will link, in a harmonised framework, a number of existing standards – and if necessary new ones – that support specific integrity issues in GVCs. This would not only reduce risks in the operation of MNCs and promote the participation of SMEs in those GVCs, but would also make the undertakings of ensuring compliance and mitigating risks simpler, faster, and less onerous.
Why is this the case?
Because standards are frameworks in nature. As such, they have an overarching nature that, on one hand, facilitates their universal use, and on the other, can be tailored to the specific nature, procedures, and systems of GVCs. This versatility of standards is what would permit the project to be implemented at the global scale covering multiple MNCs and SMEs across diverse regions and industry sectors.
Standards contribute to:
- Reducing costs and risks
- Delivering consistency where fragmentation is the norm
- Providing certainty where uncertainty is the rule
- Offering credibility and enhancing trust
- Facilitating diverse engagements and access to innovation and technology
- Ensuring quality of procedures, products, and services
- Complying with domestic and international regulations at a lower cost
