The World Trade Organization has unveiled its new WTO Global Value Chains (GVCs) Sectoral Profiles, which provide insights into the interdependence of economies and industries in manufacturing supply chains.
“The WTO GVCs Sectoral Profiles provide insights on value added exchanges that take place between economies and industries within a specific sector. The aim is to provide trade analysts and policy makers with a broad picture of international production and trade linkages in the sector under review,” said the WTO.
The first two profiles focus on the food and beverage sector and the textiles and clothing sector, based on value-added indicators for goods and services in over 70 economies.
The profiles include information sectoral linkages, regional patterns, major contributors, key players, and backward and forward GVC participation.
“Each sectoral profile includes sections on which industries and regions contribute inputs for exports of the featured sector, the share of domestic and foreign content, the top and growing economies contributing inputs to the sector, and key trends in GVC participation,” the WTO said.
The Food and Beverages Sectoral Profile notes that besides the value-added contribution of the agro-industry itself into global food and beverage exports, other industries such as agriculture, services and other manufacturing are also vital for the sector. The profile further notes that most food supply chains operate within regions. In 2022, 85% of the food and beverage exports from North America were produced there. Asia had 76% of its exports made within the region, while Europe had 62%, showing European businesses have stronger connections with global markets.
The Textiles and Clothing Sectoral Profile notes similarities in the value-added patterns of China and India—the sector’s largest players—with the domestic content of their exports amounting to 89% and 83% respectively in 2022. In contrast, several Southeast Asian economies sourced a high share of their value-added exports from foreign suppliers, notably Viet Nam (64% foreign value-added in its total exports of textiles and clothing), Cambodia (58%) and Indonesia (49%).
“In 2005, the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, which succeeded the Multi-Fibre Arrangement, expired, bringing to an end a trade regime based on trade quotas and restrictions for exports from developing economies. This helped to integrate developing economies into textiles and clothing supply chains, with countries profiting from their comparative advantages in terms of raw materials, workforce and technical expertise,” the profile states.
The profiles are furthermore complemented by the new GVC Dashboard, an interactive virtual platform which presents the online version of the graphs shown in the GVC Sectoral Profiles with full coverage of economies and industries from the data source.
More GVC Sectoral Profiles will be released in the coming months, the WTO said.
