Export Policies Review

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has released a detailed review on Australia’s approach to trade and international investment.  This is the most comprehensive review of Australia’s approach to these fields in more than a decade.  The report makes the following key recommendations that the Federal Government should adopt as part of its national export and investment strategy:

  1. Focus on reforms in relation to infrastructure, skills, taxation and regulation so as to improve export performance and international competitiveness.
  2. Target impediments and restrictions that severely constrain Australian trade and investment in high growth markets.
  3. Establish new benchmarks for free trade agreements that emphasise consistency with World Trade Organisation rules.
  4. Reinvigorate APEC’s trade and investment agenda, with a long term goal of achieving a region-wide free trade agreement.
  5. Seek to progress the Doha Development Round of World Trade Organisation negotiations and focus more attention on the dispute settlement system and advancing a World Trade Organisation reform agenda.
  6. Rationalise the Export Market Development Grants scheme and Export Finance and Insurance Corporation’s roles to include limited support for small businesses investing abroad.
  7. Foster improved policy and program coordination at all levels of government and between government and business.
  8. Allocating resources in the trade portfolio to accord with new priorities in Australia’s engagement with the global economy.  These priorities should include a focus on rapidly growing markets and enhancing exports of services and elaborately transformed manufactures.

A copy of the review is available at http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/mortimer_report/