📅 24 October 2022 🕑 15:00 – 18:00
Geneva, Switzerland
The COVID-19 pandemic represents global health and economic crisis. Initially understood as an acute shock, from which countries could recover back to a “normal”, pre-pandemic state, the persistence of the virus and its variants, as well as the sanitary measures used to combat them, make increasingly clear that the pandemic will permanently transform the global economy.
The changes to the structure of the global economy, provoked by the pandemic, represent a disproportionate threat to developing countries with poor integration in global value chains (GVCs) and low technology adoption rates, such as small island developing States (SIDS). Protracted disruptions to supply chains pose a major risk to the functioning of their economies, which depend on imports of food, energy, and intermediate goods. Even prior to the pandemic, most SIDS struggled to compete in higher-value industries, especially those based on exporting physical goods, due to their limited production capacity, small size, narrow resource base, and geographic isolation. As a result, SIDS is poorly integrated into global value chains and relies on external aid and borrowing to finance public investments and spending.
In this context, and responding to its renewed mandate under the Bridgetown Covenant to assist SIDS in “addressing their specific vulnerabilities, build resilience and promote structural economic transformation and productive capacities”, UNCTAD proposes to hold a single-year expert meeting on the theme “Revisiting development strategies for SIDS in the post-pandemic competitive landscape”.