Trade And Structural Adjustment Policies In Selected Developing Countries

Jens Andersson, Federico Bonaglia, Kiichiro Fukasaku () and Caroline Lesser
Additional contact information
Jens Andersson: Swedish Minsitry of Foreign Affairs

Development and Comp Systems from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The experience of the five examined industries (agro-food in Chile, cut flowers in Kenya,garment in Lesotho and in Mauritius and seafood in Thailand) demonstrates that non-traditional industries can emerge and achieved strong growth rates in very diverse settings in terms of geography and initial economic and social conditions. In most of these cases, the government adopted a relatively export-oriented, business- friendly attitude and adapted its policies as the industries developed. Hence, a key factor for successful structural adjustment has been the pro-active role of government in establishing an enabling economic and policy environment that allows local firms to operate on a level-playing field and strengthen their competitive edge in international markets. This highlights the importance of implementing trade policies in the framework of comprehensive development strategies and establishing a consultative national policy-making process for ensuring a coherent approach to trade and structural adjustment. The case studies also underscore that countries (government and industry) are compelled to constantly adapt in light of new sources of competition, growing wage levels, environmental constraints, technological advances and demanding product and process standards. Policy-makers in most countries under review are aware of this challenge. As a consequence, some of them have taken the initiative to set up specific mechanisms or programmes for further enhancing the competitiveness of existing export sectors and/or promoting emerging non-traditional export industries.

Keywords: Trade and structural adjustment; export diversification; trade capacity building (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O P (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2005-07-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-int and nep-sea
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 60
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/dev/papers/0507/0507003.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Trade and Structural Adjustment Policies in Selected Developing Countries (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpdc:0507003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Development and Comp Systems from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).