I had the opportunity to attend a meeting recently which was attended by high ranking civil servants from the Department of International Trade.
The meeting was to hear what the private sector wanted from free trade agreements with various countries post-Brexit. Now, without going into the debate about whether Brexit should or will happen, I got thinking.
Being unconventional, I shared with these civil servants that while it was important to have the usual terms in relation to tariffs and access to markets in these agreements, the one thing we ought to be doing is thinking about what the economy of the future will look like. As an illustration, I pointed to the smartphone which did not exist 11 years ago and yet today, we have legion of app developers and other ancillary services serving this industry (ie. telecommunications providers, IT specialists).
Trade as we know it today is not going to be what it will be in 5 or 10 years’ time. This change is constant and technology is accelerating that change. The free trade agreements we enter into have to allow for what our future economy is going to be.
So, we need to be bold. We need to make the right conditions for risk takers in industries we have yet to hear about to have access to funding, expertise and skills. And we need that sooner rather than later if we are to advance post-Brexit.
(This article was first published on LinkedIn on 13 October 2018)