Due to the once in a generation public health pandemic, the WTO has postponed its main events such as ministerial conferences for over four years. The 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) took place from 12 to 17 June 2022 at WTO headquarters in Geneva. Ministers from across the world attended to review the functioning of the multilateral trading system, to make general statements and to take action on the outlook of the WTO. The future of the WTO will face a test of credibility during the series of conferences. It takes place against the backdrop of the global coronavirus pandemic, rising food and energy prices, the massive war in Ukraine, geopolitical tensions and the ongoing threat of climate change. The conference concluded successfully on 17 June, with agreement on a package of key trade initiatives.
On the beginning day of the MC12, H.E. Justin Sun, the ambassador of Grenada to the WTO, Permanent Representative, delivered his speech on behalf of Grenada, conveying his country’s concerns on the ongoing global crisis, including climate change and the unprecedented increase in commodity prices, a startling headwind to the world economic outlook. Reportedly, Justin Sun also interviewed with the representative of Hongkong S.A.R. China amid the conference.
Justin Sun expressed, in recent years, the international community has been confronting a dangerous setback towards hyper-nationalism, deglobalization and multilateral backsliding, each of which makes the current version of globalization more complicated rather than better.
On electronic commerce, H.E Justin Sun brought up that Grenada has a systemic interest on this issue. The Grenada government regards e-Commerce and the broader digital economy, such as block chain technologies, as the next key drivers in terms of the acceleration of global economic growth and development. Prior to his duties as the ambassador, as a millennial entrepreneur, Justin was the founder of a large crypto platform. He is always keen to the ideas with respect to block chains. Being a faithful and genuine believer of digital economy, he proposed to lead the digital transformation of the world economy through block chain technology, with a view to fixing the new round of global economic recession.
H.E Sun believes that block chain can assume the functions to tackle with various digital challenges. For instance, the block chain access to safe and fast financial services at affordable costs. Based on the data provided by World Bank, some 2 billion people on the earth are actually lacking bank accounts. Block chain can therefore provide a more feasible approach to solve this global problem on a convenient and efficient basis.