BEIJING----June 5, 2013-----HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAG-Org), the global organization for professional services and education, strongly stressed that restrictions on imports can also be de facto restrictions on exports.
Speaking at the Beijing edition of the Global Services Forum (GSF) held at the China National Convention Center, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh said:" A wide variety of services contribute value to product development and manufacture, all across the value chain; this provides opportunities for businesses to diversify into service sectors that support, while not necessarily entail, manufacturing per se."
He added:" Governments can seek to contribute to increasing the share of value which their enterprises may add to global value chains. The main role of government is to create an enabling environment. That means first to the basics: adequate infrastructure (roads, ICTs, ports, schools, good quality restaurants and hotels), predictability in law and business regulation, and good administration. The other important job for governments is to eliminate barriers and bottlenecks." 
The Beijing edition of the Forum is jointly organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China and the Beijing Municipality.
According to the World Economic Forums 2012 survey of global business executives, it found that the most pressing constraints limiting greater export success included: High costs or delays from national or international transportation (14%), Corruption at borders (12%) in addition to Tariff and non-tariff barriers (20%).
"Clearly high costs, delays, corruption and tariff and non-tariff barriers are key targets for national governments looking for an easy success on the way to more competitive export growth," he said.
According to Abu-Ghazaleh, one of the key phenomena we have witnessed in recent decades is the proliferation of preferential trade agreements.
"Much discussion has been ongoing as to whether this helps advance or hinder the basic bedrock principle of the GATT/WTO which is non-discrimination. The reality is that preferential trade agreements probably do both, and are also a sign, and not merely a cause, of trouble in the multilateral negotiations. Every WTO member is involved in at least one preferential trade agreement (PTA) and the average is 13 PTAs per member. This is in addition to over 6000 bilateral investment treaties," he said.
"Despite the preponderance and proliferation of PTAs, they do not seem to make a huge impact on tariffs per se. In fact, according to the WTO, “over two-thirds of the product lines facing tariffs of over 15% have not benefitted from any reduction under PTAs,” and “the overwhelming impression of modern PTAs is that they are not primarily about tariffs,” he added.
Meanwhile and at the Creating and Promoting Partnerships high-level session, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh presented Talal Abu-Ghazaleh University (TAGIUNI) a global online university which was established in 2011.
"We established TAGIUNI to fill a very clear and obvious gap in educational services in the Middle East. In a critical 2009 study, UNESCO reported that higher education in the Arab world continually fails to meet the needs of students, employers, and society at large. Institutions in the Arab world are overcrowded, understaffed, underfunded, and they produce too many graduates with qualifications that are not in sync with today’s labor market. Moreover, the UNESCO Institute of Statistics predicts that by 2015, the Arab world will be short of 300,000 teachers; second only to Sub-Saharan Africa, which will be short of 1.2 million," he said.
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