I'm really quite pleased. My very good friend, Ian Brody, who has an affiliation here with CSIS, is going to be moderating this panel on trade and development. We have representatives from the World Bank Group. We have representatives from USAID. We have representatives from UPS and representatives from Bombardier, Canadian airspace company. And I think it's going to be quite an interesting conversation. If you said to me what one of the biggest opportunities are in international development, it's going to be at the intersection of trade and aid. And when I think about the fact that Canada has reorganized it to foreign affairs, trade and development ministry, I think this is a golden opportunity for Canada. I think I know the United States is very enthusiastic as well. And it's going to require partnerships with the World Bank and other multilateral institutions as well as working closely, very closely with the private sector. And I think we're going to be able to tease that out this opportunity, the need for multi-sector partnerships and coordination, and the opportunity in front of us if we get an agreement with the Bali getting the trade facilitation agreement in Bali. Ian, over to you. Thank you very much, Dan, for that introduction. And thank you, Dan and the crew here at CSIS for organizing this very fascinating discussion today. Dan, in particular, I know Dan lives here in D.C. He's, of course, an American. His heart, however, is spread across the Western Hemisphere from Argentina to Canada. And I appreciate that you've brought this very innovative organization here to bear to this conference topic today. On the trade and development nexus, of course, this has been a discussion with many developments over the course of a long period of time, made more urgent by the shift of global growth since 2008 towards emerging markets. We had a discussion earlier referenced to the extraordinary youth of most of the emerging markets, and I think we've understood for some time that there are win-wins here in this part of the agenda, including in particular because of the major development challenges around infrastructure, around energy, to a lesser extent, around agriculture. These are areas where private sector mobilization certainly seems to be not only possible but doable. And there certainly, as the minister explained, tremendous government demand for further action on the trade side. But nonetheless, trying to put flesh on the bones of this agenda on the official side has proven to be challenging. There are many areas of precise focus, but an overall agenda here sometimes has had some difficulty coming together. There have been efforts at the WTO, at the G20 table at the OECD, and so forth. Dan mentioned with the merger in Canada of foreign affairs and trade along with the development side. There seems to be a new opportunity here on the Canadian side. Virginia, I ask you perhaps to start us off here as a major Canadian bilateral partner, of course. How do we put the flesh on the bones here? If you had some recommendations for the Canadians trying to make use of this new merger, how might you provide some guidance on that from your own experience? Thanks, Ian, and thanks, Dan. Well, in a sense, in terms of concrete guidance, of course, I feel like being from USAID and having USTR being separate, that we're part of a dying breed here. If you look at Canada, Australia, Denmark, the Dutch, and others. But in terms of moving forward in the trade and development space, I think most people know we're quite connected with our USTR colleagues here in the US, and we're particularly connected on our efforts related to the trade facilitation agreement, and as Dan referenced, the Bali deal. Let me give a little bit of context to that as we start off. You had mentioned that there's been a lot of work in other places, the OECD and others. The OECD did a study in 2012 about the benefits of the trade facilitation agreement, and they highlighted that if countries implemented just four particular provisions there related to trade-related information and a couple of other things, that it would have a tremendous effect on trade volumes and trade costs. In fact, with just those four areas implemented, the OECD found that 14.5 percent reduction in trade costs and time to trade for low-income countries. For us in the development world, that's an area where we just don't get those kind of results, especially in such a narrow focus. So that's why for us, the trade facilitation and trade facilitation itself is so important. I know Rich and David will probably talk about the importance of it from the private sector's point of view, but that is where the intersection comes in, because it is the private sector that trades goods every day across the border. So if the implementation efforts that we focus on and the trade and development efforts don't mesh, we're not going to get the concrete results that are possible here. I think some of you know that the trade facilitation agreement in the Bali deal has found a few difficulties in Geneva, but not with standing that at USAID. We're continuing to move forward on the focus of streamlining borders, and we have done that for years. We've always said that we are doing that, and we do it particularly in the regional trade context of Africa. I would like to note that many countries have moved forward vis-a-vis the Geneva situation, and 47 countries notified what's called Category A to the WTO, saying what they would implement upon entry into force. So those are 47 developing countries, 47 developing country members. So I think that's an important step. For us, that's provided valuable information. It's also provided valuable information to the private sector in terms of what's going to be needed. So we are the leaders in TCB in terms of new models. I think I'll stop there, Ian. I can go further into exactly what AID's doing, but I think maybe I've laid the groundwork for you there on why trade and development and the next thing. No, look, I think that's an excellent framework for discussion. Richard, could I ask you, maybe if you might speak a little bit about the business coalition here. How do we construct and fill out the business coalition? Are we reaching all the right places on that front? I'd be glad to comment on that. First of all, I'm excited to be here. I want to thank Daniel and the Canadian Minister for pulling this together and the work you're going to do here, Ian. One thing's for sure, if this was easy, it'd be done right now. And I think that we're getting into some spaces that there's going to have to be some changes the way we go about trying to deliver and accomplish the goals. But to your specific question, even before I get to that, if I could just kind of set the stage for a minute. UPS is one of four companies that are part of a Global Express Association. So many of my comments are going to be centered around what we see as a company and as part of the Global Express Association. The four companies, you can think of the big four integrators with TNT and DHL and Federal Express and UPS. And we have an opportunity to employ close, collectively, well over a million people around the globe. And we provide services around the globe. So we have a really unique perch, I think, when you look at it as collectively as a group, or if you look at our organization, UPS is one of the world's largest, perhaps the largest customers brokerage. So we have an opportunity that our perch is really, I think, special. Not that it's only special because of our scope and what we get to see. So as far as from a U.S. standpoint, employing businesses together, there is a coalition that's set up in and led through the Express Association of America along with USCIB. The U.S. Chamber or some of the National Foreign Trade Council. And some of those company or associations really try to bring the voice of what we think trade facilitation might be. Some of the key objectives or some of the focus, the business coalition, is to really zero in on what it is that we think needs to be done, which is wonderful that we can share our voice on that as a stakeholder and where we think it needs to be done. And I have to thank Virginia. They've been very receptive to try to hear what we think, where the target spot should be and what the areas we need to focus on. But the nice thing is we're beginning to see early on here is that we do have a voice. And I think that's important. I think the minister said earlier that he wants to eliminate the view that the private sector is the bad guy. And I have to agree with that completely. I think that, as I said, our position is pretty special. I think I'll have a chance to share with us some of the findings a little bit later this morning that we've come across and what we see. And we just want to be and we're glad to be at the table and we're excited about the time that's ahead of us. We realize again that it's not going to be easy. It's going to be challenging. Thanks. David, may I just turn to Bombardier for a moment when I think of examples in particular from a Canadian base of countries with major investments in developing countries that really harness development potential. Bombardier would be at the top of that, at the top of that list. And then of course, Bombardier, which spoke earlier about the infrastructure challenges and development, Bombardier is probably the key infrastructure company based in Canada and selling into all sorts of developing markets with emerging urban challenges for moving people and moving goods. When the minister spoke about the Canadian private sector, maybe with some work to do to harness some of these challenges, I think of Bombardier as one of the countries that has seized that opportunity. David, do you have any lessons or any challenges in the policy agenda you might see going forward for other firms in the same space? Well, thank you Ian. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and thank you to CSIS and the minister for putting us together. Great opportunity. Yeah, you make a good point. Take a step back a little bit about Bombardier. We are a global manufacturer of planes and trains, so mobility solutions. And we are quite aggressive internationally and have been for some time out of our Canadian and Quebec routes. We've got about 70,000 people worldwide across 48 countries. We actually have 80 production and engineering centers across 20 countries. So from an international perspective, the topic today is actually quite important to us. When we started this, when I started prepping for this, I was given the question, how does the company think about development broadly? And boy, that's a broad question. I was talking to some of my colleagues to get their thoughts and some were quite helpful. Some looked at me like I was insane and others provided inputs. But one guy was actually quite interesting. And his response was, it's ingrained. We don't need to think about it. It's part of our DNA. And that's actually a pretty interesting point for a company like ours. And I think many companies that it's not about thinking regards of development. It's about it's a part of a business. And for us, our core business, as you mentioned, planes, trains, developing mobility solutions for all nations, regions, locales is pretty is pretty tied to development objectives around the world. Basically, our products support transportation networks that ultimately support competitive economies, whether they're emerging or whether they're whether they're established. So for us, it's been a long haul and we started our international foray into the US actually in the 80s. So with the rail business. And from there, we've gone into many other countries. In terms of lessons learned as you had, lessons learned are, there's a multitude of lessons. But the partnering piece, I think is very important, being able to engage governments, being able to engage academic institutions, financial institutions, etc. Very important to us. But also one of our key strategic pillars is establishing local routes. So as we go into a market that we think is important, it's not just about selling products, it's about putting down routes that can be facilities that can be people on the ground that can be joint ventures that can be supply chains. That's very important to us, hence the 80 production centers and across 20 countries. So if there are lessons learned, I think from our perspective, one of the key ones is establishing presence in the markets that you are aiming at. And while there are many others, I think that's probably the key one that we followed over the years. Clouse, you've taken over this new position, this new organization in what is already an established institution in this space. Now you have long experience in the private sector side of the development equation. But can you give us an idea at this early stage of the new evolution of the World Bank in this space? What you see is the global standards, the global opportunities and the role of the bank and the multiliterals can bring here. Thank you very much. And thank you very much for the invitation. And it's indeed very fitting that you refer to the merger, because in some way there's a trade and competitiveness practice that I'm part of really only started coming together about three months ago. So I would say a lot of lessons to be learned already. But let me sort of set the broader context. I think the first one is, of course, that we see two overriding goals driving this discussion. The first one is the elimination of poverty and the second one is to increase shared prosperity. And I think we all agree that there's been absolutely no country that has actually accomplished any type of sustained growth without trade. And so in that sense, I think that we all agree that there's been a lot of progress in this effort that we have in terms of promoting this. We start with a point of view, obviously, governance. Governments are important partners for us. We see significant hurdles that private sector traders are actually facing, inefficient border management procedures, opaque rules and regulations. And all of this really impacts very negatively the ability for countries to take what really has inspired us is this new trade facilitation reform agenda that I think a lot of us are working on and hoping to come to fruition. Countries cannot change resource endowments and their geography. But what they can do and governments in particular can do is they can take policy decisions to remove many of the hurdles that are standing in the way. And that's where we are coming in. The bank has a portfolio of about $13 billion, devoted to aid for trade, half of which goes for trade facilitation. And this entire portfolio really covers a gamut of things, integrating countries into the global economy, making supply chains more efficient, reducing costs, trade barriers and unnecessary bottlenecks. When it comes to, since you asked me sort of what's our footprint, our footprint is about 200 professionals working in about 120 offices around the world. We have technical expertise. We work internationally, nationally, regionally. We have long-term relationship with the private sector as well as with governments. And what is really motivating, a lot of our discussion is the data source that we have that we bring to this, whether this is doing business or the global logistics performance index. That really sort of really sets the stage in terms of identifying where the opportunities are. As far as the WTO agreement itself is concerned, we are fully supportive. We think this is a very strong blueprint for us. And in fact, when we look back at the last 20 years of what it is that we have supported, we see a lot of coincidence of efforts. We have about 120 projects in customs and border management that we have supported over the last 20 years. And that often is sort of a real, very effective way then of talking what is required in terms of implementation capacity. So when it comes down to sort of our second leg or third leg, it's really to focus very much in terms of building the capacity of governments to then take these measures. We see some that are very effective. They have very high payoffs, whether these are more predictable trading regimes, establishment of trade facilitation committees, trade information panels, single-source windows. So in other words, it's a real focus that we have irrespective of where the international negotiations are. But we believe we want to get on with the job. And one of the first things that we have actually started just as this new practice was created, we set up in July a trade facilitation support program together with Australia, Canada, the European Commission, Switzerland, Norway. And that sort of really giving us a foot right in the door already in terms of providing the support. So there is a very strong momentum that we see going forward, irrespective of what or how long it will take in Geneva to sort of unlock this deadline. Klaus, can I ask you, Richard said, you know, in this space of the trade development nexus, if it was easy, it would have been done already. You spoke about the Bali agreement. But it strikes me here we're getting into, regardless of how, you know, which countries alert us to which part of the Bali agreement they're going to implement, that we're into very, very tough, difficult, detailed work of capacity building, project by project, trying to break down some of these trade barriers. These are very difficult to get a handle on in a global sense, their country by country and region by region. Are there some tools or some instruments that national governments and multilateral should be looking to build out here to try and help us get a handle on this? Tools that could bring the government sector, public sector, official sector and the private sector together. What's the next, you know, we're trying to keep track of how much progress has been made here and where the opportunities are. It's not clear to me yet that we have a complete collection of tool kit available for this. Well, actually, one of the things that I noticed when we started this global practice is an inventory of the tool kit is very, very important. I think a lot of what is driving the discussion and in fact, the growing consensus is actually a very strong data set. I don't want to enumerate all of it, but I think there must be at least 20 or 30 different data tools around in terms of diagnosing this. And I know that the Global Express Association has phenomenal data collection tools in terms of actually identifying sort of where the spots are. And I think that's really important not to sort of get hung up on ideology, but really be driven by data. In fact, yesterday there was a very interesting dinner of the trade community in Washington. And Lord and behold, not surprisingly, the overwhelming two recommendations. One was we need something like the Doing Business Index for trade. And the other one is we need a real global coalition of MNCs as well as SMEs to actually have a dialogue continuously with the bank in terms of where those areas actually are, because our sense is governments are incredibly willing. I mean, this is really a coalition of the willing to move forward. The stories are incredibly compelling when you go and have a discussion in about two days between the Port Authority in Mombasa and the administration in Higali. And you can basically see that over the course of a very few months the transportation clearance time has gone down from 15 days to five days. You know that that is something that everyone actually wants to participate in and wants to actually see benefit from. So I would say those are the three things. One is the stories themselves. The evidence is very compelling. I think the data is really driving this. And I think that there is almost like an overwhelming demand. I mean, even if there are a lot of technical issues that need to be sorted out, the demand for the capacity building is really, actually everyone is benefiting from the window that needs to be there. Because we are not just looking at the legal compliance we're really talking about being ready for taking this forward. Virginia, I was going to go back to you because you started with the discussion of the OECD study, the data sources, and at the beginning of the opportunity here, going forward from the Bali Agreement through the trade facilitation piece, do you have a view on the toolkit that we're developing here and where the big opportunities might be? Well, I think picking up on the one thing that Klaus said is the need to have the private sector involved in this. And certainly from the USA perspective, the first thing that we did in terms of the tool kit is we have put out a sequencing guide that takes the provisions of the agreement and puts them into three different categories in terms of how we see sequencing interventions related to the agreement. I think having that overarching discussion is really important because we've certainly seen historically that some of these interventions, if you do one before the other, you really have to undo the first one when you come in to do the second one.  So it, we're very concerned about that and but again I think that's where the private sector comes in so heavily. And for us we have decided that the current tool kits and the tool kits we've used in the past aren't what we really need. We have to embark in a different way. A new model to deliver assistance. We've already heard a lot about it from the minister today and certainly USA is in the same boat that the landscape is different and we have to turn now and partner with the private sector. And we also have to engage with non-traditional donors that are already in the space and bring everyone together. So we're looking to create and I know for those of you who read Dan's paper in the folder a trade facilitation alliance that this would be our our go-to tool for trade facilitation and in this area. Most of you know that USA has been embarking on this kind of effort. We launched a new global lab this summer related to science and technology. In the next panel you'll hear more about that. We've embarked on several grand challenges which take what the best that the private sector has to offer. I would encourage all of you to google or Bing or whatever search engine you use grand challenge and Ebola to see the latest grand challenge that came out this week to fight Ebola. But these are the new models that we want to embark on related to trade facilitation. We do think that the time is right and this is a particular area that the private sector is interested in because as I said earlier they are the ones moving the goods. They are the ones with the real information on the ground of what needs to be done in the sequencing. No I'd like to follow up. I thought the question was directed to me was it? No it was. Okay sorry. No it really was. So Daniel just came back in the room and I think he'd be disappointed if I didn't mention the database the GEA database and um and and what I'm going to talk about in a minute if you're interested in taking a look at it you can go to www.global-express.org so it's global-express.org and as I said earlier we're one of four companies that are part of the Global Express Association so towards the tail end of last year we launched an initiative to try to assess the capabilities of customs around the globe and so we used our members all four of our members and we looked at 139 countries we started this essence it was a survey given to our own members of our four companies to go out and really understand what the capabilities of customs are in those 139 countries that we worked on. We had a peer-to-peer review after the series was done so you can imagine we chopped the world up into four sections and each one of us kind of took on a particular part of the world and once we filled out the survey we put it in front of our peers and we scrubbed it a little bit better and then we published through the GEA published the results of the survey back in the end of the first quarter of this year and one of the things that we also did is we made sure that we notified the customs agencies in the 139 countries here's what we think is going on you can take a look at and let us know if you agree or disagree with us and in a positive sense we did get quite a bit of feedback and we were pretty much online. Now what is this customs capability database show you the 139 countries? Well when we launched this survey it was prior to the Bali agreement coming out so what you're going to find is that we ask questions that mirror quite a few of the trade facilitation agreements and which was a nice thing because now we had a benchmark to kind of look at which countries we feel have some of the capabilities that are in the trade facilitation agreement and which ones still have a ways to go. I'll give you an example of some of the key performance indicators that we looked at there are three that I just want to talk to. I think article seven one is pre-arrival processing when you take a look at the 139 countries that we surveyed we saw that 65 of those countries don't have that capability or they're not asking for electronic pre-clearance for goods entering a particular country so that's a good indicator of a key powerful area to start. Another one of the articles seven four seven point four on risk assessment we found that 77 countries don't do any type of automated electronic risk assessment of goods coming into their country and if you just kind of compare the first two that I talked about that means there's there's probably you know 12 countries out there that do get the electronic information but they're not utilizing it for risk assessment and it's just an indicator of where there may be opportunities and perhaps one more to take a look at would be on the de minimis level and even though it's I think was 7.8 in the trade facilitation agreement you know wasn't an obligation but it was a best endeavor language of those 139 countries or about 48 of them that did not have a set de minimis level and de minimis is important if I were to go back and and kind of talk about you know when as an industry when we look at trade facilitation if I could just put a picture in your mind just kind of hold that up for a minute picture in your mind think of an hourglass and the reason I say think of an hourglass is because it's trade facilitation challenges are all those things that would go into the middle section of that hourglass and if you can think of four or five key things that we take a look at when we think of trade facilitation one of the first one is the de minimis level we want to make sure that there's a commercially meaningful de minimis that's set out there you know we take a look at what it takes to collect revenue dollars and at some of the lowest de minimis levels or with low de minimis thresholds you know there's there's a process and a cost to collect duties and taxes and at process and costs are just passed on to the end consumer so what we're finding is that at the lower levels we're almost charging three dollars to collect one dollar in revenue in other words that the costs of the goods are so low that the revenue that's collected is so little when you apply the de minimis charge to it the fee that it doesn't make sense to have these lower de minimis thresholds out there so that's one of the things that we've uncovered so commercially meaningful de minimis is important electronic pre-clearance processing is vitally important you know a couple others would be the single windows that many of the countries are standing up we see that as an important solution to widen that gap in the hourglass certainly timely release as a dot timely release of goods is you know just adopted wco guidelines for timely release we think would be important and i guess i'd have to throw into the mix into that that pinch point would be border harmonization of security processes you know since 2010 there's been a lot of focus with customs agencies and border agencies around the globe to make sure that risk assessments being done there's a lot of wonderful programs out there the key thing is to make sure that that they're recognized from one country to the next truly recognize to allow you know some simplification of the regulations we know that they need to be there but we think that you know again from our perch we see all these wonderful programs but when companies have to register in each individual country for these programs it becomes a challenge and most of them are very common we know that there can be some harmonization to bring these together and i'll wrap it up with this you know we're finding that there is a real significant relationship between trade flows to and from countries and the customs capability of those countries there are some real significant relationships that as you implement some of these trade facilitation measures you will see trade grow and and i know that sounds anecdotal but i think you'll see some studies coming up pretty soon that shows there are some real significant correlations that show that as you move one lever you're going to see trade flow and that's that's what's really good about this capability index it's a wonderful tool and i think it can help us provide you know some stakeholder and on the ground views of what we think where the needle can go thank you well that's a very focused agenda there actually an on de minimis takes me back to my canadian government days where that we had issues on the de minimis side ourselves david if i could ask you to turn your mind to the policy agenda here obviously not on the same sector of the businesses as UPS and i doubt that any of bombardier's equipment goes through in a de minimis rule when you're moving entire train systems but is there are there pieces of the of the public agenda here internationally you could see moving to help remove some barriers from bombardier's own growth and developing countries and to make it easier for for some of your customers in the developing world to take advantage of the transportation products you're producing i think from our perspective trade facilitation is is absolutely key from a manufacturing perspective one i think as you would think in terms of market access for our products but perhaps more importantly for this venue is you know i talked a bit about our focus on on developing low presence in local roots when we go into a country we're looking at developing a manufacturing site or other type of site like we are right now in morocco and in brazil you know one of the key important factors for that site the success of that site and ultimately the economic impact it's going to have locally in terms of a developer perspective is our ability to support that site i mean every site we have manufacturing site we have builds products that are complex and builds products in conjunction with other sites that are far flung around the world so for example we have planes that components coming from belfast from morocco from mexico coming to canada or to the united states for final assembly so very important for us to be able to make sure that that manufacturing network is indeed integrated and running smoothly but also the value chains and supply chains that support it across borders so when our ceo thinks in terms of markets he thinks in terms of nationalities but he also thinks in terms of manufacturing hubs basically how do we support this site here in this country how does our chain supply chain support it how does our manufacturing network engage with it you know can we make this work from an operations perspective because in today's competitive environment just in time manufacturing is key so we have to be able to get components products human expertise those kinds of things crossing borders in a streamlined fashion so for us when we look at when we're searching for a place to put some kind of facility we are definitely looking at the things you would think about tax incentives and you know market opportunity and that sort of thing but we're also looking very much at how well we can do business and function as an entity in that country with that comes all the trappings of locating a plant or a service facility there you have clusters that arise with suppliers so you build a supplier cluster you have training activities to support the local workforce and then develop a workforce pool so there are are there's a ripple effect for when we go into a country and the success and or lack thereof is very much determined on trade policy in that country and how that country how we're able to supply those sites from other sectors around the world so you know I would say trade facilitation is a huge thing for us again because of market access as you would think but also from that perspective Klaus can I ask you going back to my days at IDB here in DC the trade facilitation projects were amongst the most difficult complicated projects to undertake at the bank and for obvious reasons you're dealing with bilateral or regional political arrangements the financing was it could be difficult to arrange trying to find the corporate structures or the organizational structures to make it work was difficult then of course these go on over a period of long periods of time with payoffs in on the same time order of magnitude here you talk a little bit about what multiliterals and others might be able to do to try and resolve these twin challenges the political organizational challenge of organizing the projects planning them and executing them and compare that to the financing challenges involves money may not be the dollar values here are not enormous dollar values but nonetheless because of the payoff cycle here they can have their own financing challenge how do you see the balance between these twin challenges of delivering on these types of projects I was which I feel tempted to sort of say well maybe things have changed because in some way when you look at sort of the portfolio of what we have as a trading competitiveness we have a very small lending portfolio and I think what that really speaks to is the agility that we bring to to this whole agenda is actually our ability to work with partners to be able to mobilize trust funds very quickly and to actually have a very strong link to the country demand so I have I mean at the first like I said it's it's pretty phenomenal to sort of say this trade facilitation support facility that we set up was three months old we have talked with us idiots with other partners we have not 30 country requests we have teams on the ground so in I as far as I can tell there's there's a ready market and a ready ability to respond to this so on the on the analytic and on the capacity buildings that I don't really I have not encountered this obviously where things become more complicated are when when these are really sort of break through transformation projects and I just wanted to mention one of them is the Great Lakes Initiative where this is one of the signature I think almost political initiatives to sort of see how we can actually tie these different markets together and there yes it is true this is a truly multi-sectoral challenge you have to bring not just great facilitation but hard infrastructure in their capacity building you have a lot of political synchronization that needs to happen and I would say on those type of operations yes we are looking at probably two or three years worth of of preparation time the political economy I think is very favorable at least as far as I can tell because we have really put such a spotlight on it there's ongoing discussions with I think Jim Kim Ban Ki-moon others to actually promote this forward so I would say the political support is clearly there as far as sort of the the sort of the internal organization is concerned that's a very interesting question because that's really where this whole internal reorganization has to show whether it's really able to deliver and I can tell you one of the very first discussions that we have is from the trade competitiveness practice to talk to the transport folks because that's really our sort of partner in crime if you will across and within the bank another partner in crime is very clearly IFC to really understand where they are actually seeing the business development opportunities and the investment those are sort of conversations that I can assure you we did not have before so I would say I mean literally I mean I've been in the bank for 25 years I can tell you trade was not necessarily my brief before coming now it has really changed and really opened my mind and I think that is really the type of capability that we need much more of and I think that will make us much more agile to actually respond to that so I'm very optimistic in terms of both handling the organizational issue as well as the financing challenge I have not seen this I would say there's one interesting part which is sort of maybe a counterintuitive way of answering this over the last three months we have gone out and we have met with many country directors bilateral donors government agencies the demand for this trade competitiveness next is huge so for us the challenge is not in terms of just growing by multiples which would be very simple to do you can't do this in an international organization as you well know so for us the question is what is actually the metric for figuring out what are the most impactful activities and I think that's where we will have to apply much tighter filter I also think that we have to work differently with other organizations so the mindset that it is us that are actually delivering this I think is passe so we need to really figure out working with associations with other implementation but it's much more important going forward thanks well just following up on what Klaus said I think it is important to acknowledge that that we need to work differently among ourselves among the donor group which and I continue to go back to say that is what AID is striving to do I think particularly in the trade facilitation space we are fighting I would say it's just the perception and not the reality but we are fighting the perception that we aren't coordinated and we do talk about this quite a bit because in the development world it's very interesting if you take any issue and we've just seen it with Ebola and global health the question is everybody organized in global health in development the answer we all know the answer to that the answer is no we just saw it play out well trade all of a sudden in trade because of the Bali deal and because of section two of that agreement that says that donors need to work together suddenly we're in the spotlight everyone's expecting us to instantly be coordinated talking about each other and by the way bringing in the private sector so I think this is a huge challenge for us but I think we're all ready for it as Klaus said and as you acknowledged in your comments time is moving on things are changing we're in a completely different realm now in development so I think that's that's certainly where U.S. aid is at we I just wanted to say something about the trade facilitation support fund when Klaus named the donors actually the U.S. was the original donor and Canada came in right after that so I want to get a plug in there for that exactly exactly but I think that's really important to show and it is what exactly what Klaus said why did we do that even though we're saying we want to build this trade facilitation alliance and public private partnership we were the initial contributors to the IFC fund because we knew they could stand up quickly which is exactly what he just said and we do feel like there has to be for us as well as other bilateral donors and I know Canada feels the same way because we've been in discussions with them we have to have a menu albeit a small menu of options that we can use or tools that we can call on to support countries as they come forward and ask for requests so the IFC fund is one but I think that's allowing us then as a donor community to to have more concerted efforts and more coordination which has been I think by everyone's estimation sorely lacking in the past well let me ask you about that then because this is one area in development where the resources are clearly there and the demand is clearly there the combination of ODA and official resources and private sector resources maybe there's some coordination there to work at but talk about this menu of options then we know that the data resources are are coming online Rich talked about checklist of issues that need to be that that that that his organization the global express organizations focused on in terms of trying to see where the customs organizations are and facilitating this what kind of menu do you say what what from your perspective would be a a a promising project a promising initiative to undertake and what would that menu look like you're directing that to Rich well for us again it's the trade facilitation alliance we are we're putting that together we we know we know that everyone has been talking about partnering with the private sector it's not a new idea I mean we we have done some of that in our value chain work in West Africa for example we supported the African Casual Alliance the Global Shea Alliance which required us to work with the private sector we worked with Nestle Unilever Hershey's Costco but we haven't we haven't then they were purchasing the products and we were essentially on the donor side supporting all of the producers in the country we haven't gone that next step to really bring the private sector in in terms of project design and what should really be done to give them a seat essentially on the board to say no development people you may have normally done it this way but this is what's really going to flip the switch pull the lever whatever the case may be that's going to make trade flow there's just many things that from the official donor perspective we just don't have the answers to and that's why for us Elin Alliance a true public-private partnership that brings the private sector to the table to be involved in that project design is really where we should move in in this space and that's really what we're embarking on yeah be happy to comment on this you know one of the I guess when you when I earlier when I said it's not going to be easy I think that one of the things we're going to have to do is look for those early adopters look for those countries and they have to be meaningful and impactful early adopters and I think that's going to be some of the tough decisions you know that governments that fund these projects are going to have to make decisions on they can't take care of everybody at once but you got to identify those countries that have the political courage that can make an impact and that can stay focused on trade facilitation there you know there are many important projects out there some very social some of them infrastructure but there's some that you really got to have that laser focus on trade facilitation if you don't do that all the well intentions and I love Virginia's example you know you you paved the road and then you had to tear it up to put the pipes in that's going to happen you're going to see earlier there was discussions on the small medium and enterprises and the small companies I mean it's going to be so important to keep them in mind as we move forward with these trade implementation you have to have the stakeholders at the table certainly hope that our industry can be at that table to help provide some insights and our findings on what impactful trade facilitation is going to look like but we know it's not going to be easy I don't you know I don't envy being in the position of making a decision of which countries we're going to address now in which ones are going to have to wait until we get these early adopters up and running when you talk about what are some of the specific areas you can focus in on you know one of the key drivers when you look through that trade facilitation agreement certainly is this electronic pre-clearance and this electronic submission of information and bringing border agencies and customs you know modernization to the forefront and you know there ought to be some synergies with that when you find needs that are very common across different countries you know solutions ought to be developed that can be not so much plug and play but where they can adapt and climb right on board and become part and see their modernization efforts advance so I you know I think that it's going to take those type of efforts those types of focus one of the things that Virginia said you know the relationships that maybe donors have with particular countries you know the deep relationships they have they're going to have to look at things a little bit differently and work with trade ministers and work with customs officials to really find out what it is that's got to be developed and implemented to see to see this really do what it can do and it's going to get done I mean I think Secretary General Ezevedo and the the Geneva team they're going to find a way to get this thing moving I really truly believe I don't know when it's going to happen I know that they hope to continue to meet this month but this is going to move and even if it doesn't there's going to be opportunities that to enhance trade facilitation class this is getting to be a hopeful note Harry you talked about the challenges of ramping up the World Bank efforts here in the multi-lateral office here obviously we can't triple and quadruple the size in the space of six months in a multi-lateral operation Richard just talked about the need for the impactful early adopters here we're moving down the same line here if you look ahead let's say we're talking about early adopters here let's look down two or three years maybe five years out what what are we looking for for the early adopters what do they look like I'm not talking about individual countries I think we're too early to talk about that but what would what would a partner have to look like in order to be in those in that early adopter group to attract World Bank and other early attention and then what would others have to be working on in order to be in the next tranche where there's just a little bit more work to do before we can flick the switch from or give the go ahead the green light for the projects class what is it as you try to pull together this new organization this new team within the the World Bank you must have given some thoughts of this what what will the early projects look like and what will need to be done to move the next tranche of projects through I mean I have to I have to acknowledge that the questions is way better than my answer is going to be so thank you very much very thoughtful but I mean based on sort of what I've seen what I've learned in the in the last in the first three months is obviously you know there are two sort of separate tracks the one is somewhat opportunistically very quickly to stand up which is the trade facilitation a window I think there you know clearly we are driven by demand we'll have to see 30 different assessments will obviously generate a whole lot of data set I think the the criteria that we're laid out here we want to see countries that are really committed where there is a longer term impact it's a it's a very wide variety of countries that are that are really pledging for this assessment support when it comes down to sort of the way the bank actually operates in a sort of more traditional way I can only tell you sort of where I've picked up very strong demand is in Africa particularly East Africa we have a very complex start-up operation on the Echo bus countries I see a very strong demand in South Asia in fact it's it's almost crying out for for doing something on this one very closely linked to the the whole political transformation process there's a very interesting agenda actually when it comes down to the India agenda which is not just you know it's you know we have sort of termed this India actually integrating with itself and then regional integration huge demand in East Asia just phenomenal in terms of the whole possibilities that we have and we have very long-standing operations in Laos and Cambodia so those are just some of the hotspots that I see whereas there's a very very strong demand from from our side and since you mentioned Robert Acevedo I mean it's it's no coincidence that he's actually here tomorrow at a panel at the bank to to address this and I was last week in in Geneva and in Brussels and I thought he really captured this perfectly trade matters to everyone so I think that is really the the mantra that we have to pretty much all get behind in order to actually make this work I think what we would like to illustrate much more compellingly is that this is really an agenda that is very closely linked to I think what you mentioned the inclusiveness part we need to make sure that we are not caught in a corner that this is only relevant and of benefit to multinationals I think there's a business model challenge that I think we want to see pushed much more SMEs connected directly to consumers so I would say that space around innovation we haven't even touched so I think we have to really open our minds to some very different and much more innovative ways of thinking about this so the link to entrepreneurship that is also part of our practice to innovation I think is pretty critical I'm not sure that anyway this was sort of my improvised answer to your fantastic question so what I see is really I mean I clearly see geographically very strong emphasis I do see that a lot more needs to be done in terms of then connecting this to entrepreneurship business models and so on so wants to grow oh absolutely I think it's where our you know we'll grow where our customers grow and I think not just for us but for our industry but yes those are very interesting that's good look I'm mindful Dan here of trying to keep our project on our program on schedule here today but I think this has been a persuasive discussion of the opportunities here and I have the very strong sense of being on the verge of an extraordinary amount of progress in the next couple of years I'm happy to take some closing comments from folks though would like to start with Virginia thanks well certainly the the Bali package has presented us with an interesting opportunity a great opportunity and the way the trade facilitation agreement was structured it is the first time that really at the WTO it brings trade and development together I think we need to seize the moment move forward again this is an area we've been working on for many many years but but we have an opportunity to proceed in a new and different way in partnership with the private sector thanks well from our perspective for us that nexus between trade and business opportunity is really critical based again on the on the nature of our business I think we're very interested in getting involved I think there the discussion today has been quite positive given that I think there is value that the private sector can bring to the discussion if only from a here's what we've experienced in the past kind of a perspective so we're actually quite interested in that and so thank you for a very useful discussion today I appreciate it couple comments say you know one of the interesting things Virginia said earlier she talked about the 47 48 countries have already submitted their eight commitments and we have an opportunity now to take a look at those and if you run that list up against tonight earlier I talked about a customs capability database that we took a look at you know one of the challenges that we're finding and we kind of anticipated it and I don't know what the answer the solution is but you know some of the a commitments meaning that they're implement they're now they're up to speed right now when you bump those up against the the capability database that we have we don't we don't quite see the same alignment so I think that's going to be one area going down to the in the future that we'll have to look for a path of how you know we can you know can help point that out and that leads to the next comment which is you know give us an opportunity of stakeholders to to lend our expertise in the area to to help show what you know what good might be looking like elsewhere and it's it's certainly not to to point out that there's a wrong it's to say there's there's other things going on around the globe or maybe in the area that you can adopt that are really going to help you facilitate trade in your country if I had to leave you with one closing comment just remember this that when it's easier to trade you know more trade happens and I think that that shows what the power of border modernization customs modernization is all about thank you well I mean the first comment is obviously yeah since I'm a newcomer to this whole area after about 20 years it's not it doesn't feel anymore like your parents treat facilitation discussion from 10 or 15 years ago I think there's two or three things that I see the first one is it is for us very closely linked to what we are about as a development organization so the Nexus is very powerful the opportunity to link with the private sector across the board across the spectrum is there and the other one is we didn't talk about it that much maybe the next panel will address is the possibility for leapfrogging I think there's there's a lot that can be done maybe in unconventional in different ways and I think that's where the the selection of these pilots and as you very correctly said the the selection criteria to where the gaps actually are and I think that's sort of I see really a very sophisticated and very quick process of coming to terms with that so this is not a random search great well thank you very much for that fascinating and encouraging discussion and in a field where some of the discussions are not always quite so optimistic and upbeat Dan I think we've started here with a with an optimistic and upbeat discussion let me thank you on behalf of everyone here the the panelists for their time and Dan I'll turn it back to you thank you thank you okay I'm going to use the microphone for this thank you very much I think when you get into the nitty gritty of this topic you think oh boy de minimis this and computerized that it's it's you have to understand that there is a trillion dollars with a T of additional trade if you could fix the plumbing this issue of trade facilitation if you could fix the plumbing at the border in developing countries there's five hundred billion dollars of more trade for developed countries and five hundred billion dollars more for developing countries but it's not necessarily a question of money as there was we alluded to here and Ian was able to pull out it's it's about a question of information and some of that's provided by data such as the global freight forwarders associations database that rich talked about but I think we're going to need to go farther and this is an opportunity for donors to help do a better job of getting this data and cross-referencing what's happening in Geneva at the negotiations and what's happening actually on the ground with customs and crosswalking that because even though some negotiators think they're going to deliver their governments getting these sorts of changes through are politically difficult and they're also deal with sometimes corruption issues it's not an inefficiency issues and so it's a question of political will so it's some of it's about a data problem and that's a role for donors like Canada or or the World Bank to build such a thing or maybe an organization like CSIS but then it's a question to starting who's actually really got the political will to actually follow that through some of that's going to be discerned by donors at the field level some of that's going to be discerned by companies we're going to say you know what they've saying XYZ and Geneva but when I go back on the ground my reality is this and that's why this data that Rich was talking about is so important so big trade and a big development opportunity and it requires data requires a little bit of foreign aid not a lot the World Bank estimates about 20 million dollars a country and then it requires political will and it's about the politics of this which is the particularly challenging thing and we need to get ready because we are going to have a trade facilitation agreement it's coming if you're following this stuff as a trade person and so we need to pivot from a trade negotiation paradigm to a diplomacy and development implementation paradigm and development agencies like AID or the World Bank aren't going to be able or Canadians Canada's DFATD are not going to be able to do it alone they're going to require new kinds of partnerships with Bombardier UPS, FedEx other companies that are here but also that aren't here as well so thanks again for doing this thanks a lot Ian for that very interesting conversation that we just had we're going to have we're going to now shift to a conversation with on the role of science and technology in the implications for public policy I'm going to ask the panelists to come on up please Rich is here and some