Thursday, March 24, 2011

Terrorism as a new Trade Barrier

"We're learning to live with terrorism" ( Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer at Johnson Illington Advisors).

No matter how sad it is to admit, but we have to deal with terrorism as a factor, which affects various aspects of our modern life. It greatly influences global trade thus becoming a new kind of trade barrier.

The scheme is simple: terrorism leads to insecurity, which causes government to restrict border security measures, which, in its turn, raises the cost of doing business. Also, when government spends immense amount of money on security they have to cut expenses in other areas. Thus, investment in infrastructure such as roads, transportation system and so on may be cut down, which could lead to decrease in trade between nations.

After recent terrorist acts in Russian subway (last year) and at Domodedovo airport few months back it was announced that the Russian government would spend over $1,6 billion over the next three years to increase transportation security, especially of the Moscow metro system, which is the second busiest in the world. http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/russia-spending-16-billion-bolster-transportation-security

Of course this is something that has to be done, since the government is in charge of its citizens' security, but that also means the money outflow from the other sectors of the economy. In a long run this can affect competitiveness of Russian business and the volume of trade between domestic companies and their foreign partners.

In my opinion, there is nothing much we can do about it. Countries have to spend money on security measures, because safety of citizens is priority #1. It is the price we have to pay. But some steps can be and need to be taken in order to support and ease cross-border trade between countries and their strategic partners.

No comments:

Post a Comment