2019 has been a year of great success for International Economics Ltd. Our team has grown to include more data scientists, project managers and trade specialists, and we have further diversified our network of internationally renowned senior technical advisers, expanding our presence beyond Mauritius to Australia, Belgium, Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Myanmar, Philippines, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam.
We have continued to grow our global footprint in trade advisory services and have been actively engaged in more than 50 countries this year, working on export strategies, global production networks, impact evaluations, and providing trade policy and negotiation support.
In Geneva, we are supporting the ACP Ambassadors as they build coalitions in WTO negotiations, in Ghana, we are working on the implementation roadmap of their trade agreement with the EU, as well as building capacity of Indonesian negotiators, strengthening the sustainability of New Zealand’s trade agreements in the Pacific, and supporting Thailand and Cambodia in deepening their integration in ASEAN.
We have also been engaged in advising on e-commerce negotiations and digital trade policies, in Cambodia, Laos, Lesotho, Myanmar and Vietnam, as well as in Commonwealth Small States, and East Asia and Pacific LDCs. We have strengthened our mainstay in impact evaluations, having completed a global stocktaking exercise of the World Bank’s Trade Facilitation Support Programme, suggested improvements to SADC’s monitoring and evaluation system, and finalised the economic impact evaluation of DFID-funded TMEA – the largest trade programme in the world. Next year, we will also be picking back up on our work conducting the final evaluation of the DFID supported Indian Trade and Investment for Africa programme, and the Commonwealth’s global Economic Development Programme.
We continue to be trusted advisors to the British government (FCO, DIT and DFID) as the country prepares for various post-Brexit scenarios and trade relationships, as well as to the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat.
Closer to home in Africa, we have been honing our expertise in all aspects related to the recently agreed, ambitious African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). This includes appraising new projects for the African Union and UNECA, forecasting and identifying future agricultural value chains, and promoting accelerated regional integration processes in Eastern and Southern Africa.
We are tightening our partnership with the private sector, having forged alliances with investors from India into Africa, supported the Indian Ocean Chambers of Commerce in their strategic plan, accompanied textile exporters in entering new markets, advised banks on digital solutions and digital trade, and designed a data analytics platform for a transport company. In 2019, we became Microsoft Partners for deploying trade analytics tools on their Platform.
Our strong collaboration continues with Appleton Luff, a boutique international law firm, and we also signed a strategic partnership with Paz Horowitz, a leading Latin American law firm based in Ecuador for delivering services in the Andean Community region.
We maintain our position as a leading consultancy firm in the field of trade economics by once again being named in Who’s Who Legal. We also continue our mission to impart knowledge and expertise through lectures at Middlesex University, the College of Europe, Belarus State University, among others. We are also excited to have been awarded a number of trade-related framework contracts for the EU and DFID, including supporting commercial diplomacy for DG Trade.
We are proud to be closing the year with such incredible success. Looking ahead to 2020, we will strive to accelerate our growth momentum, we will renew our commitment to quality services, and we will continue to innovate and develop our advisory and analytic services. These are our promises to better support our Clients as they navigate the complexity of an ever-changing, fast-paced world.
In this holiday season, the team at International Economics wishes you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year, filled with success, happiness and good health!
