Background information: Enhancing developing countries’ participation in and benefits from dynamic and new sectors in world trade is an important way of assuring development gains from international trade and the trading system. Realizing this objective requires strategic national policies at the macro, sectoral and micro levels to address structural, institutional, technological, skill and related constraints, as well as support from international policies to help developing countries improve their competitiveness and supply capacities. This should include necessary actions in the multilateral trading system and trade negotiations to improve market access and market penetration and to provide flexibility and policy space; improvement in preferential schemes; and the provision of financial resources, debt relief and capacity-building support.

Purpose and expected outcome: The interactive panel debate will focus on the discussion of specific sectors under two dimensions: (1) key aspects of the most relevant experiences of successful developing countries to capitalize on potential opportunities offered by dynamic and new sectors in world trade to reduce these countres&apo; dependence on commodities and labor- and resource-intensive products, significantly enhance domestic export value added, improve growth performance and bring down levels of poverty; and (2) the core challenge to developing countries in moving up the value chain, that is, the establishment of a virtuous circle among investment, innovation and technological change; productivity and supply capacity; and enhanced export and growth performance. The debate is also expected to provide guidance to the UNCTAD sectoral trade reviews to deal with dynamic and new sectors.