Webinar Talk Series: GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN: Before Covid 19 and After (14th July 2020, 6:00 p.m.)

The Webinar will first put focus on the evolution of Global Value Chain (GVC) during the last two decades, detailing the cost advantages of keeping the pre and post fabrication stages of production in developed countries and relocating the fabrication stages to developing countries. The process of global fragmentation of production gave rise to Factory Asia, Factory Europe & Factory North America.

The USA-China trade war has already caused substantial damage to the cost effectiveness of GVC by raising the cost of imported traded goods. Now, Covid 19 has led to severe disruptions in GVC and exposed the system to the danger of depending on a few suppliers for key inputs .The risk management issues have not been adequately addressed while determining the geographical distribution of value chains.

In the face of the pandemic, the future pathways of GVC may take three forms:

1. Drive towards localization of value chains
2. Regionalization of value chains
3. Continuation of GVC with more geographical dispersal.

The discussion will focus on factors which stands in the way of any dramatic transformation of GVC, particularly in the low wage assembly line fabrication.

The Webinar will highlight some of the structural transformation that has been taking place in GVC with very little public debate, like possibility of automation in half of the labour intensive jobs, and digitization, servicification, knowledge intensification and regionalization of GVC.

The Webinar will wind up with a discussion on a narrative of how India can reshape her policy framework to get a greater foothold in the Post-covid transformation of global value chain in pre-fabrication, fabrication and post-fabrication stages.