Third Regional-Global Trade in Value Added (TiVA) Initiatives Workshop

The Regional-Global meeting on Trade in Value Added (TiVA) initiatives took place in Paris, at the headquarters of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the end of June 2019. This meeting came as a follow-up to the development of the different TiVA initiatives.

Delegates from different international organizations participated including the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United States Department of Commerce, Asian Development Bank (ADB), the European Commission's Joint Research Center (EC-JRC), as well as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Western Asia (ESCWA), and Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Representatives of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (INEGI), Statistics Canada, the University of Groningen (WIOD) and EUROSTAT also took part in the discussions.

During the meeting, ECLAC presented new advances of the Latin America and Caribbean TiVA initiative. At the moment, the number of countries included increased from 10 to 18 when compared to the 2005 version. Apart from all major South American countries, the new version includes Mexico and the countries of Central America for the year of 2011. An update to the year of 2014 is being assembled. Likewise, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced future advances in their Asia Pacific Input-Output Table (IOT) and a project for future convergence between the IOTs of Latin America and the Caribbean with the Multiregional IOT from ADB. Both databases will form a new multi-country matrix for most of all FEALAC member countries in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

For its part, the OECD anticipated the launch of a new updated TIVA database for the period 2005-2015, which will include trade and employment, and embedded carbon (CO2). It was also announced that at the moment the WIOD database will not be updated due to lack of financing.

The third TiVA Regional-Global Workshop aimed to promote greater coordination among all initiatives in order to guarantee coherence and comparability, promoting as far as possible a greater harmonization of data sources. The group reiterated the importance of using data from official sources, a same exchange rate for the purposes of conversion of national statistics, as well as a common criterion of criteria for balancing bilateral flows and the use of standard classifications: The International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC); the Classification of Economic Activities of the European Community (NACE); and the Classification of Products by Activity (CPA).

Below are more details of the progress made by ECLAC, as well as the conclusions of the workshop, the list of participants, and some links of common interest to the international community.