The WTO and its multilateral development bank partners have reviewed progress on their joint supply chain finance initiative, the programme meant to widen access to trade credit for small and mid sized exporters in developing countries. The review covers commitments by the participating institutions to expand supply chain finance lines and standardise the documentation that makes them usable.
Trade finance is the invisible infrastructure of the trading system: most world trade moves on credit, and the gap between the credit small exporters need and what banks supply has been estimated in the trillions of dollars. When banks retreat from a market, for compliance cost or risk reasons, the exporters who lose their lines are rarely the ones who make headlines.
The initiative’s progress review is a modest document with a structural point. In a year when trade policy has been about tariffs and defensive instruments, supply chain finance is the part of the system still being built to expand trade rather than restrict it, and the development banks, not the trade ministries, are doing the building.