Trade and its growth bring the opportunity to create more and better quality employments, promote innovation and creativity, increase productivity and are development drivers. The Trade Facilitation Agreement is in this sense an extremely competent tool for these goals and even more so for the developing countries and for the small and medium enterprises.

That is why, the lack of concrete results in the CM11 held in Buenos Aires, including the failure to produce a joint final communication, raises some concerns and thus creates a need to rethink -in an increasingly shorter term- which are the mechanisms and changes that can be posed to preserve and activate the World Trade Organization which by its sole presence, and within the framework of WTO disciplines, has been preventing further damages from predatory behaviors to “worsen the economy of neighbors”, but on the above mentioned critical issues WTO should have long ago chosen different ways of dealing and reaching agreements, as the number of country members turns reaching consensus an utopia.

The G20 becomes the proper environment to develop change alternatives, in complex processes as the one depicted above.

Among other issues, the G20 has been working on a framework for investment rules, with the purpose of achieving clear, transparent and accurate investment rules, easily accessible to potential interested parties and thus, contrary to what has quite often occurred, not allowing real batteries of incentives being offered to achieve the establishment of one or more companies. No doubt, some progress has been made, but there are still some practices persisting that are highly detrimental, particularly to the countries who implement them -and even more detrimental when implemented in developing countries- because these practices affect monetary resources -always scarce- that should be devoted to cover unfulfilled basic needs in the most disadvantaged sectors of their populations.

Environmental issues related to trade and investment are also involved, as it may well be the case -and in fact is- that for location purposes and under similar conditions, the regulations on environment protection being more or less stringent most probably will end up being a decisive factor for companies. That is why is so important the Climate Change Agreements and improving its preventive aspects on investments to avoid costly consequences for the future and asymmetric conditions in the offerings for business establishment.

The G20 has contributed with a series of recommendations to achieve a fairer and more modern tax system. One of the most outstanding is the BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) package of recommendations focused on preventing tax avoidance and low tax location strategies. Also the G20 has proposed some goals to achieve international standards that promote fiscal transparency and has reinforced its support to improve tax systems in less developed countries.

Finally, the G20 in Buenos Aires will be a great opportunity to firmly proceed with proposals focused on meeting the challenges on these critical issues that the technological revolution poses for the development and employment in these countries.