African leaders signed Wednesday a 26-nation free trade pact to create a common market that would span half the continent from Cairo to Cape Town. The Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) deal, which must still be fine-tuned and ratified, caps five years of talks to set up a framework for preferential tariffs to ease the […]
Expanding Export and Investment Markets
Can Mobile Financial Services Bring an End To Poverty?
An estimated 2.5 billion adults do not have access to banks. Unsurprisingly, they are among the world’s most destitute: According to a report released by the World Bank and other development groups, about three out of four adults living on less than $2 a day, from farmers in Tanzania to slum-dwellers in India to seamstresses […]
African Economies to Grow 4.5% on Average in 2015
NAIROBI- Africa’s fitful and uneven economic growth will gain momentum this year and next, three prominent organizations said in a joint report released on Monday. Continue reading at: Wall Street Journal
Former USTRs: President Must Have ‘fast track’ to Complete TPP, TTIP
The U.S. is slowly building momentum for two historic trade pacts: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). But without trade promotion authority (TPA) – which grants the president the right to negotiate a non-amendable deal with expedited floor debate – these deals will never pass. So say America’s lead […]
The Future of U.S. Trade Policy
The post-World War II era has seen the dramatic growth of international trade and the creation of a global trading framework based on the principles of open economies. The United States has been at the forefront of these changes, even as its reliance on trade remains near the lowest of any developed country. The global […]
Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Matters
AFTER five years, American-led negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade liberalization agreement with 11 other countries that collectively account for 40 percent of the world’s economy, are nearly complete. The next step is for Congress to allow for the same legislative process — an up-or-down vote on the deal — that it applied to […]
US Government to Back American Investment into Fertile Ukrainian Agriculture Sector
American Overseas Private Investment Corporation is paving the way for a multi-million dollar investment into Ukrainian agriculture, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food. The US-government corporation is ready to invest up to USD 250 million per project. Ukrainian Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food Oleksiy Pavlenko said that the country needs […]