“E-commerce is a powerful means to connect the unconnected to global trade.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The tourism industry has considerable potential to be a sustainability role model in its role as a buyer of goods and other services, from building materials and green construction standards to farm produce.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Governments can’t credibly claim to be concerned about stagnant growth and ageing workforces unless they are actively seeking to empower women economically. One way they can speed up progress towards gender-equal economic opportunity is to change laws that are holding women back.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“While tourism is often resource-intensive, it is a major driver of poverty reduction in developing countries.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Technology is making it easier for women to connect to business opportunities around the world. Legal obstacles must not be allowed to stand in their way. That’s not just because it’s economically smart. It’s because discrimination shouldn’t be the law.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Creating large numbers of decent jobs for young people is critical for achieving overall development objectives, from poverty reduction to better health and education.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Everything we produce and consume has an impact on the environment, on social fabrics, and on the economy. This impact can be positive or negative and, frequently, some combination of the two.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The big part of coffee production in many rural areas is in the hands of women. It’s women who work in the fields. They harvest the coffee. They wash the coffee. They take the coffee to the market. But when the coffee gets to the market, it’s the man who cashes in the money for the crop.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Entrepreneurship is one of the most important drivers for job creation. Moreover, social entrepreneurship offers not only a path for young people to transform their own lives, but also a way to empower others.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“It has been proven through studies by the World Bank and others that companies participating in international trade are more competitive.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The lack of livelihood opportunities in refugee camps pushes many people to embark on dangerous journeys in the quest for a better life.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Governments everywhere have ministries dedicated to women’s affairs. I know of only one with a Ministry for Women Empowerment: Indonesia. Charged with the ‘realization of gender equality and justice’ together with children’s well-being, the ministry frames gender equality as a matter of justice.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Economic desperation often drives wildlife destruction like poaching or illegal logging. But trade can help create powerful financial incentives for communities to preserve the biodiversity around them.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Laws matter. With effective implementation and enforcement, good laws can nudge forward positive changes in social and cultural mores.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Sustainable production and consumption matter immensely to the people I meet every day as head of the International Trade Centre, which works with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help them boost growth and job creation by improving their competitiveness and connecting to international markets.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Trade and investment promotion organizations are crucial partners in ITC’s work to enable SMEs to internationalize. They sustain and multiply the impact of trade-related technical support and allow SMEs to function with confidence in any location.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Economic policy that adheres to the tenets of orthodoxy while failing to deliver for large sections of society is doomed to fail.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Skills development as a means to income generation is the key to integrate vulnerable migrants into the mainstream of society and to equip them for an eventual return home.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“In their pursuit of growth and diversification, African economies should consider transforming the discourse from a focus on industrialisation to a broader one centred on value addition in agriculture, manufacturing, and services.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Fully implementing the WTO trade facilitation agreement is one ingredient to reduce border delays and costs for traded merchandise.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Predictably, open markets made it possible for countries to drive rapid growth by hitching their wagon to the world economy and using global demand to pull people and resources out of subsistence activities into more productive work.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Responsive governments committed to improving the broader trade facilitation and business environment can help companies of all sizes by improving infrastructure: roads, transportation, ports, information and communication technology, and electricity.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Through e-commerce, women have found a means to jump over cultural and traditional lack of available time for remunerated activities.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Women are the most underutilized ‘resource’ in the world economy.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Growth without diversification, technological improvement, and increased productivity is easily reversed: all it takes is a dip in commodity prices.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“There are bridges that we have built not only between individual companies but also between associations. This will keep business and investments flowing.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The unfolding migratory crisis has become one of the most acute challenges facing the international community. Millions of lives are at stake. All of us have a responsibility to act. Collectively, we need to find solutions.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Connecting small and medium-sized businesses to international markets can create work for host country nationals alongside refugees, building economic growth and resilience in host communities.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Governments around the world are looking for economic growth and job creation. African economies are no exception, with increasing recognition that growth has to be built on a more diversified economic structure in order to make a lasting contribution to development.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Many African smallholder farmers did not share in the ‘green revolution’ productivity gains driven by modern seeds and techniques, irrigation, and greater fertilizer use in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“There is no intrinsic reason African countries should be importing, rather than exporting, basic staples like rice or higher value products like frozen chicken, cooking oil, or instant noodles.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“In the ten years leading up to 2013, quinoa prices nearly tripled on the back of skyrocketing international demand for the latest ‘superfood’. The grain had traditionally been cultivated in the high Andean plateau, principally for household consumption. But as prices rose, farmers’ incentive to sell it as a cash crop grew.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“International consumers can rest assured that their quinoa purchases have benefited some of Latin America’s poorest people, together with their families.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Jobs are the main channel through which people share in – or are left out of – economic growth.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Large companies everywhere tend to be more productive than small ones. But the gap in productivity is far wider in developing countries.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Improving SME productivity translates into more and better paying jobs, distributed across less fortunate sections of the economy.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“In landlocked developing countries, geographical barriers to markets are unnecessarily accompanied by virtual ones: their e-connectivity rates are among the world’s lowest.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“It is no coincidence that in the wake of the Arab Spring, investment in youth-related initiatives, especially related to employment, has increased sharply.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Full social and political engagement is impossible without economic empowerment, a point that is as true for women as it is for young people of either gender.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Without action to de-carbonize our economies, unchecked climate change threatens to batter lives and economies around the world, hitting the poorest people hardest.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Entrepreneurs – both women and men – need equal and fair access to finance – to create new businesses, to reach to new markets, and to adapt to climate change.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Companies that operate across borders have the expertise SMEs need. Who better to help smallholder farmers navigate complex sustainability standards than the companies who demand – or set – them?”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“When the International Trade Centre, the agency I head, works with German electronics giant Bosch to help Kenyan food processing companies boost their productivity and export competitiveness, we may well be creating future customers for Bosch washing machines.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Most people – including business leaders – want a healthy future for their children.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“In my experience, what is often missing between intent and action is the knowledge and the means to actually change the way we do business or make consumer decisions.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Consumers need more insight into the goods and services they purchase. Businesses need to produce those goods and services more sustainably.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“ITC works to help firms in poor countries become more competitive and overcome the barriers that are keeping their goods and services out of international markets.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Around the world, it is much more difficult for women than for men to run a successful business. Even when laws are not explicitly biased against them, companies owned and operated by women often face discrimination every step of the way, from obtaining finance to finding customers.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“In my job, as head of the International Trade Centre, I have the privilege to meet entrepreneurs from across the world almost on a daily basis.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Sometimes all it takes to connect entrepreneurs to overseas buyers is to get them into the same room.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Can trade help lift people out of poverty? It can, and it has.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“What exactly is trade facilitation? In a nutshell, it is an effort to enable global trade by reducing red tape and streamline customs. In even simpler words: making it easier for companies to trade across borders.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“For Latin American countries seeking to play a bigger role in global trade, effectively implementing trade-facilitating reforms could be an important tool in their toolkits.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Through trade reforms, Latin American countries can boost their competitiveness in markets for goods and services.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Latin Americans are all too familiar with the boom and bust cycles associated with economic populism.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The populists are right in one key area: voters want jobs and equitable growth, and can hardly be faulted for that. The challenge is to find a more inclusive growth trajectory that can be sustained economically, ecologically, and politically.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Some of the anti-trade sentiment is the result of rising wealth inequality and stagnating real wages.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Policy and business elites did not speak frankly about the unequal distribution of benefits from trade and failed to adequately accompany market-opening with good domestic policies to equip displaced workers to upskill, adjust, and share in the new opportunities being created.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“If governments start to go it alone on trade, it will become harder, not easier, to generate the jobs and rising incomes that angry electorates want.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Inward-looking unilateral trade policies invite retaliation.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“In a climate where governments are limited in what they can spend, trade and investment offer a path to fiscally responsible growth.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Trade and investment are good for innovation – open economies allow new ideas and technologies to diffuse more quickly from wherever they are created.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Look at a map of the world: the countries which do not trade much, or which trade only in oil and gas, tend to be in regions which suffer the most social and political instability.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“I think that when voters react negatively to trade and investment, they are really expressing their angst about the pace of technological change.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Ever since the first power looms put weavers out of work in the late 18th century, technology has increased productivity but threatened jobs for humans.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The factory work that lifted millions out of poverty in places like China and Vietnam probably did cost some workers in North Carolina and Wallonia their jobs.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The fact is that during the post-1989 heyday of globalization optimism, political and business elites did not think enough about the prospect – plainly predicted in economic theory – that trade would harm some people even while leaving society as a whole better off. The result was overpromised benefits and inadequate adjustment plans.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Africans don’t just need more jobs: they need better jobs.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Exporting firms are more productive and pay higher wages than their domestically focused counterparts, especially in places like Sub-Saharan Africa. If firms manage to thrive in world markets, they tend to increase their productivity even more.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Japan has huge potential in women – potential, especially in the area of the economy, that Japan is not using fully.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“You only have a problem when you admit you have a problem.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“We often run the risk, when discussing women empowerment, to think that this is about women talking about women with other women, but this is not the point.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The deeper your regional integration, the more value chain activity you generate, but the more you close the gap between your small and your large companies.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Our key objective is to remove obstacles to trade.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“We survey companies and ask them what the barriers to export and import are. Once we map these barriers, we sit down with the companies on one side and the government and regulatory agencies on the other and help them identify obstacles to trade and what has to be done to tackle them.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“I have seen African countries negotiate bilaterally and within the WTO. African countries come to the WTO prepared and defend their interests with vigour.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“African pressure has led the E.U. to rethink part of its agricultural subsidy programme.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Through the SITA initiative, we are building bridges between India and East Africa by taking Indian companies to these countries to see with their own eyes what the opportunities are.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The representatives of young professionals and woman entrepreneurs deserve seats at the big table to evolve viable, efficient, and sustainable solutions for problems the world is faced with. Without their participation, there will always be a deficit of compassion and innovation.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Empowering women with greater income opportunities will lift societies at a much faster rate.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“It makes perfect economic sense to integrate women in the economy in the developing world in order to catch up with advanced countries, thereby minimising socioeconomic costs as well.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Our main aim globally is to connect more women to the economy because we know there is a specific market failure there: women are having more difficulty in business than men.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The most difficult part of Brexit will be to figure out the trade regime between the U.K. and the rest of the E.U. because the level of trade integration between the members of the E.U. is the deepest in the world and integrates regulations that govern how products and services are produced and sold within the E.U.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“I have been talking to trade ministers in various countries who all say that gender inclusivity is important to them. We need to make this importance visible to the rest of the world and catalyse action towards more inclusive trade.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The ‘SheTrades’ programme aims to connect one million women entrepreneurs to markets by 2020 with a campaign, a focussed networking app, and a range of international and national information resources.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Women are the half of the engine of our societies; they are half of the engines of our economies.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“The social and legal discrimination that relegates hundreds of women to subordinate or marginal economic roles has a huge aggregate cost.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“When women are paid for their work and have control over how the money gets spent, they invest much more of their income than men do in their families’ education and health.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“You must stand up for multilateralism. You must make trade great again.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“A.P., like the rest of India, has huge potential to move up the value chain by investing in small and medium enterprises to create more value addition and better paid jobs.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“ITC looks forward to working with the chief minister and the government of India to ensure trade leads to impact on the ground.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“Gender-based job restrictions tend to be associated with wider wage gaps and lower employment rates for women. And where girls’ future earning potential is limited, families may choose to send their brothers to school instead.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
“China has proven that the wellbeing of citizens in a country doesn’t necessarily contradict its engagement globally.”
― Arancha Gonzalez
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