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Business Matters: 'Trillion Dollar' Trade Boost Comes Into Force

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'Trillion Dollar' Trade Boost Comes Into Force

23/02/2017 GMT

BBC World Service - Business Matters, 'Trillion Dollar' Trade Boost Comes Into Force

World Trade Organization chiefs say new agreement is biggest trade reform in a generation

An international agreement forecast to boost global trade by $1 trillion a year has come into force. The Director General of the World Trade Organization(WTO), Roberto Azevedo, called it 'the biggest reform of global trade in a generation'. The Trade Facilitation Agreement involves streamlining customs procedures and involves countries signing up to a long list of reforms, including easier access for businesses to information, reduced fees and simpler and faster procedures. The WTO claims it will particularly aid emerging economies. Joshua Meltzer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC gives us his assessment of its potential impact.

In Nigeria, the continued absence of the country's President Muhammadu Buhari for health reasons is causing economic instability in the country. The BBC's Russell Padmore brings us more.

The new US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and his cabinet colleague responsible for Homeland Security, John Kelly, are set to visit Mexico,with trade, President Trump's proposed border wall, and the further efforts to tackle illegal immigration likely to be discussed, as the BBC's James Cook explains from the US-Mexico border in Texas.

We'll hear about a potential jobs revolution for blind workers in India. And it's all to do with their superior sense of smell. The BBC's Yogita Limaye will tell us more. 

Fergus Nicoll is joined throughout the programme from Silicon Valley in the United States by Alison Van Diggelen, host of freshdialogues.com, and Catherine Yeung in Hong Kong, director at Fidelity International.

(Photo: The port of Singapore, the World's second busiest shipping port. Credit: Chris McGrath/Getty Images).

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