Is the UK Missing Out on Trade for Growth?

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe spoke to Chris Southworth, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce, United Kingdom.

Transcript

00:00Chris Southworth is from the International Chamber of Commerce in the UK.

00:04Chris joins us now. Hello. We are hearing Britain's largest business group, CBI,

00:08is quite angry with the Labour Party over its spending priorities. What's your take?

00:14Well, the initial reaction is I think this is the fourth or fifth statement we've had from

00:19our Treasury Department with the Chancellor for this government and the previous government,

00:23where there's just no mention of trade. The core issue in the UK is we've had a flatlining economy

00:29for many years actually now. It is all about growth. The government is right to prioritise

00:34growth. You can't grow an economy like the UK without growing trade. So it was disappointing

00:41not to have any reference to trade of any scale at all. There are real opportunities.

00:47We've set out a plan for growth just yesterday, where we're offering government 250 to 270 billion

00:54pounds of growth and productivity and efficiency savings, and that wasn't announced or incorporated

01:01within the statements today, which is a missed opportunity. Just the regulators alone could be

01:08unlocking, the financial regulators could unlock £22 billion in working capital to fund small

01:14companies to trade, and they could do that in a matter of weeks or months. It's a huge opportunity

01:20missed, I think, from today. It's interesting because she spoke about building for Britain and

01:25building over a million houses, talking about kick-starting growth, but our growth prospects

01:30have just been halved down to 1%. What else could be done to create growth? Are you seeing anything

01:36in what she's saying that is going to kick-start growth? Well I think, you know, today we're just

01:42not hearing the whole story, and I think if there's a frustration from our community of

01:47international companies, it's we're just not talking trade and trade finance enough. There are

01:52genuine opportunities to reform the system, unlock a lot of finance into the economy. That will drive

02:00growth for small companies, which will pay the revenues we want for public services

02:04and defence spending, but we've got to pull the lever, and we've got to lean into the trade

02:09agenda and modernise the trading system. It's suffocating under a mountain of bureaucracy,

02:16and old-fashioned systems, when actually what we should be doing is driving modernisation,

02:21digital transformation, to unlock immediate growth, short-term and medium-term growth,

02:28but actually get fit for purpose for the 21st century, and the UK should be leading this at

02:33global level, not just delivering it at national level. You know, much of Europe is in a similar

02:37poor growth outlook. If we look though at Asian economies, they're expecting 4.5% growth this year.

02:44Why this disparity? That's a really good question. It's not just the UK,

02:49it's Western Europe. You know, the underlying issues is we've had a sort of decade

02:54of political chaos. There's been a massive under-investment, particularly in trade

03:00infrastructure, but in all the infrastructure involved in trade for a long time, there's

03:05nothing new in that. And then we've got pockets of society that have been left behind, so we've

03:11got very angry populations, just like the US and parts of France and Germany and other countries as

03:16well. That's very different in the emerging markets, not just in Asia, but in places like

03:21Africa and the Middle East, where you can really sense the dynamism, but there's a lot more

03:25investment going in in those kind of regions of the world as well. What we need to do is mirror

03:32some of that. We have world-class legislation, some of the best in the world. We've got world-class

03:37innovation facilities, we've got world-class talent, and we know exactly what to do. We've got

03:42plans and frameworks, but what we need to pull the lever in order to then unlock the change

03:49and implement the change, that's what we need to see. And we can be just as competitive as

03:53anywhere else in the world, but that was all missing today. What we'd like to see is that

03:58now being set out in the trade strategy in May, because it will really boost business confidence.

04:05Businesses complain about friction in trade all the time. It costs them an awful lot of money

04:10that's unnecessary in today's modern world when we're using technology. So the UK can really be

04:16leading it, unlocking the finance and the funding and the resources that we need to boost confidence

04:21and growth, and engaging with our trade relationships across the world, whether that's

04:27the Middle East or Asia or Africa or the Commonwealth, where there's a real appetite to work

04:32with the UK. There's a lot of potential, but we need to leverage that potential and make the most

04:38of it. Well thank you so much Chris Southworth from the International Chamber of Commerce in

04:42the United Kingdom.

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