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interests of all countries, but in
particular, those that are poorest
and weakest, as well as small and
medium enterprises, which at the
end of the day, represent more
than 95% of the economic tissue
of any country and more than 70%
of employment. Intelligent and
fair trade opening is my recipe.
Intelligent because opening
trade needs to focus on today’s
obstacles to trade. These are
mostly non-tariff barriers that
create too high fixed costs for
enterprises, in particular SMEs
to join production chains. This
is why I believe it is smart policy
that Mauritius has teamed up
with ITC to identify non-tariff
measures affecting its businesses.
Addressing these will provide a
boost to Mauritian entrepreneurs.
Finally, trade opening does not
work on its own. Success comes
from a combined effort of pursuing
market-oriented economic
policies, investing in education
and skills, support for privatesector
development to build
supply capacity and investment
promotion. In a nutshell, “trade
plus” is what I have seen work.
In Mauritius, ITC has a long
history of collaboration with
National TSIs and notably with
MCCI. What is your message for
MCCI and more generally for
Mauritius?
- My message is a
straightforward one: strong trade
and investment institutions
in Mauritius make for more
and better trade by Mauritius.
Strong institutions will be key to
help Mauritius better exploit its
position as gateway for trade and
investment in Africa.
This is why ITC has supported
both Enterprise Mauritius (2012)
and MCCI (2014) benchmark their
performance and services to set
a baseline for the development
of a thorough and long lasting
performance improvement
programme. The benchmark will
help MCCI build on its numerous
assets to provide state of the art
services to its clients and help
them internationalise. I believe
the next step could be to map
the overall national trade support
network of Mauritius, as well as
its existing services, to address
gaps and improve performance in
support of Mauritius’ Government
goal of One-Stop Shop (OSS)
initiative on enterprise creation,
as well as import and export
clearance.
In this context, ITC and the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Regional Integration and
International Trade have recently
launched, with the support of
MCCI the Trade Obstacles Alert
Mechanism (TOAM), an online
platform to allow SMEs to post
online information about the
challenges they face when trading
so that a rapid solution can be
deployed by the relevant agency.
Career path
Arancha González, the Executive Director of the ITC since
September 2013, is an expert in international trade issues
with 20 years of experience. She has broad knowledge
about international trade and economics, together with
extensive experience in trade and development matters in
the public and private sectors, as well as in management
at multilateral organizations. Before joining ITC, she
served as Chief of Staff to the Director-General of World
Trade Organisation Pascal Lamy from 2005 to 2013.
Between 2002 and 2004, she was the European Union
spokesperson for trade and adviser to the European
Union Trade Commissioner. Arancha González began
her career in the private sector advising companies on
trade, competition and state-aid matters. She served as
an associate at Bruckhaus Westrick Stegemann, a major
German law firm in Brussels.
A long-lasting alliance with the MCCI
With its 50 years of existence, ITC can proudly look
back at their on-going achievements. Collaborating
with Trade Support Institutions (TSIs) of Mauritius,
ITC has carried out many projects, the most recent
ones being the National Export Strategy (NES) and the
Trade Obstacles Alert Mechanism (TOAM). ITC has a
long-lasting alliance with the MCCI since the mid-80s.
The two organisations have conducted jointly various
projects and workshops, including Buyers/sellers
meetings, benchmarking exercises, capacity building
and development of information tools.
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