Kevadia, 10-12 June 2023: Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) Senior Policy Advisor Anita Prakash represented ERIA at the third G20 Trade and Investment Working Group (TIWG) meeting under India’s presidency in Kevadia, Gujarat, India. 

On the first day, a seminar on trade infrastructure discussed the role of logistics in expanding global value chains (GVCs) and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) going global and integration with GVCs. After the seminar, the TIWG delegates were given a guided tour of the Statue of Unity, the tallest statue in the world. 

The Indian Presidency presented action-oriented concrete proposals on each of the priority issues: trade for growth and prosperity; resilient trade and GVCs; integrating MSMEs in world trade; logistics for trade; and World Trade Organization (WTO) reforms.

The final consensus was built around three proposals related to developing high-level principles for the digitalisation of trade documents, an action plan to create a meta-information interface for MSMEs, G20 regulatory dialogue, and preparing a compendium on best practices for mutual recognition agreements (MRAs). The text for the Ministerial Communique and the Annexes was negotiated in the meeting.

The Kevadia meeting was followed by an intersessional meeting of TIWG held online on 14- 16 August to further finalise the text. ERIA attended this meeting.