Executive summary
  The international community is set to define the post-2015 development framework
and  sustainable development goals wherein  trade  is expected  to play a  key  catalytic  role.
Experience  suggests  that  the  transmission  of  efficiency  gains  from  trade  integration  to
broad-based  development  is  not  automatic  and  remains  to  be  established with  conscious
policy  efforts.  This  will  require  coherent  and  integrated  policy  intervention  at  the
macroeconomic  and  individual  sectoral  levels  supportive  of  structural  transformation  to
build  broad-based  productive  capacities with  possibility  for  diversification,  technological
upgrading and job creation.  
  Such  changing  policy  needs  and  priorities  need  to  be  supported  by  an  enabling
economic  environment,  of which  an  open,  transparent,  inclusive,  non-discriminatory  and
rules-based  multilateral  trading  and  financial  system  remains  an  integral  part.  Despite
recurrent  setbacks,  multilateralism  remains  a  global  public  good  to  be  supported  and
upheld.  The  centrality  and  credibility  of  the  multilateral  trading  system  is  increasingly
under stress as global trade governance becomes fragmented with the increased prevalence
of regional and plurilateral processes. While the ninth Ministerial Conference of the World
Trade Organization  (WTO)  (3–6 December  2013, Bali,  Indonesia)  adopted  a  package  of
decisions,  including  the Agreement on Trade Facilitation, difficulties  in  implementing  the
Bali  package  have  again  cast  uncertainties  over  the  prospects  for  the  post-Bali  work  to
conclude  the  Doha  Round.  Efforts  are  needed  to  ensure  that  multilateral  and  other
processes can create an enabling environment for sustainable development.