SMEs’ competitiveness and international trade in the era of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in Tanzania: An assessment and future challenges

International trade continues to play a crucial role in economic transformation in African countries. The rise of Global Value Chains (GVCs) presents opportunities through which international trade can be effectively conducted. GVCs facilitate organization of trade, international production and inve...

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Main Author: Francis Lwesya
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Asociación Española de Contabilidad y Administración de Empresas (AECA), Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT) 2021-03-01
Series:Small Business International Review
Subjects:
Online Access:https://sbir.upct.es/index.php/sbir/article/view/325
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author Francis Lwesya
author_facet Francis Lwesya
author_sort Francis Lwesya
collection DOAJ
description International trade continues to play a crucial role in economic transformation in African countries. The rise of Global Value Chains (GVCs) presents opportunities through which international trade can be effectively conducted. GVCs facilitate organization of trade, international production and investment by locating different stages of production process across varied countries. This presents opportunities to integrate Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) into global trading systems but also may generate challenges particularly to resource constrained SMEs. Reviewing the challenges for the participation in international trade and possible integration into GVCs by Tanzania’s SMEs, the results show that the major challenges for SMEs internationalization are international marketing related constraints and global competition (69%), supply side constraints (56%), unfriendly investment climate (50%) and financial constraints (37.5%). As such, the role of trade policies remains critical in mitigating some of these challenges through formulating friendly legal and regulatory frameworks, enhancing SMEs productivity by building their managerial and technical capacities, minimizing trade costs, and increasing trade openness. However, given the current global, regional and domestic developments in Tanzania, trade policies need review so as to respond to the changing global trade landscape but also promote policy harmony, coherence and complementarities among varying implementing institutions, deficiency of which is debilitating policy implementation at present
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publisher Asociación Española de Contabilidad y Administración de Empresas (AECA), Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT)
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spelling doaj-art-c1a873f0fc64450c9ce90790c83c42b52025-08-20T02:02:29ZengAsociación Española de Contabilidad y Administración de Empresas (AECA), Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT)Small Business International Review2531-00462021-03-0151e32510.26784/sbir.v5i1.325325SMEs’ competitiveness and international trade in the era of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in Tanzania: An assessment and future challengesFrancis Lwesya0Department of Business Administration and Management, University of DodomaInternational trade continues to play a crucial role in economic transformation in African countries. The rise of Global Value Chains (GVCs) presents opportunities through which international trade can be effectively conducted. GVCs facilitate organization of trade, international production and investment by locating different stages of production process across varied countries. This presents opportunities to integrate Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) into global trading systems but also may generate challenges particularly to resource constrained SMEs. Reviewing the challenges for the participation in international trade and possible integration into GVCs by Tanzania’s SMEs, the results show that the major challenges for SMEs internationalization are international marketing related constraints and global competition (69%), supply side constraints (56%), unfriendly investment climate (50%) and financial constraints (37.5%). As such, the role of trade policies remains critical in mitigating some of these challenges through formulating friendly legal and regulatory frameworks, enhancing SMEs productivity by building their managerial and technical capacities, minimizing trade costs, and increasing trade openness. However, given the current global, regional and domestic developments in Tanzania, trade policies need review so as to respond to the changing global trade landscape but also promote policy harmony, coherence and complementarities among varying implementing institutions, deficiency of which is debilitating policy implementation at presenthttps://sbir.upct.es/index.php/sbir/article/view/325smesglobal value chain (gvc)trade policiesinternational tradesmes competitiveness
spellingShingle Francis Lwesya
SMEs’ competitiveness and international trade in the era of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in Tanzania: An assessment and future challenges
Small Business International Review
smes
global value chain (gvc)
trade policies
international trade
smes competitiveness
title SMEs’ competitiveness and international trade in the era of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in Tanzania: An assessment and future challenges
title_full SMEs’ competitiveness and international trade in the era of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in Tanzania: An assessment and future challenges
title_fullStr SMEs’ competitiveness and international trade in the era of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in Tanzania: An assessment and future challenges
title_full_unstemmed SMEs’ competitiveness and international trade in the era of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in Tanzania: An assessment and future challenges
title_short SMEs’ competitiveness and international trade in the era of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in Tanzania: An assessment and future challenges
title_sort smes competitiveness and international trade in the era of global value chains gvcs in tanzania an assessment and future challenges
topic smes
global value chain (gvc)
trade policies
international trade
smes competitiveness
url https://sbir.upct.es/index.php/sbir/article/view/325
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