Quotes from Arancha Gonzalez

Women are the most underutilized 'resource' in the world economy.

Around the world, it is much more difficult for women than for men to run a successful business. Even when laws are not explicitly biased against them, companies owned and operated by women often face discrimination every step of the way, from obtaining finance to finding customers.

The populists are right in one key area: voters want jobs and equitable growth, and can hardly be faulted for that. The challenge is to find a more inclusive growth trajectory that can be sustained economically, ecologically, and politically.

I think that when voters react negatively to trade and investment, they are really expressing their angst about the pace of technological change.

Skills development as a means to income generation is the key to integrate vulnerable migrants into the mainstream of society and to equip them for an eventual return home.

Exporting firms are more productive and pay higher wages than their domestically focused counterparts, especially in places like Sub-Saharan Africa. If firms manage to thrive in world markets, they tend to increase their productivity even more.

Some of the anti-trade sentiment is the result of rising wealth inequality and stagnating real wages.

Predictably, open markets made it possible for countries to drive rapid growth by hitching their wagon to the world economy and using global demand to pull people and resources out of subsistence activities into more productive work.

Most people - including business leaders - want a healthy future for their children.

Look at a map of the world: the countries which do not trade much, or which trade only in oil and gas, tend to be in regions which suffer the most social and political instability.

The big part of coffee production in many rural areas is in the hands of women. It's women who work in the fields. They harvest the coffee. They wash the coffee. They take the coffee to the market. But when the coffee gets to the market, it's the man who cashes in the money for the crop.

When the International Trade Centre, the agency I head, works with German electronics giant Bosch to help Kenyan food processing companies boost their productivity and export competitiveness, we may well be creating future customers for Bosch washing machines.

Jobs are the main channel through which people share in - or are left out of - economic growth.

Companies that operate across borders have the expertise SMEs need. Who better to help smallholder farmers navigate complex sustainability standards than the companies who demand - or set - them?

ITC works to help firms in poor countries become more competitive and overcome the barriers that are keeping their goods and services out of international markets.

Governments everywhere have ministries dedicated to women's affairs. I know of only one with a Ministry for Women Empowerment: Indonesia. Charged with the 'realization of gender equality and justice' together with children's well-being, the ministry frames gender equality as a matter of justice.

China has proven that the wellbeing of citizens in a country doesn't necessarily contradict its engagement globally.

Trade and investment are good for innovation - open economies allow new ideas and technologies to diffuse more quickly from wherever they are created.

In my job, as head of the International Trade Centre, I have the privilege to meet entrepreneurs from across the world almost on a daily basis.

Improving SME productivity translates into more and better paying jobs, distributed across less fortunate sections of the economy.

We often run the risk, when discussing women empowerment, to think that this is about women talking about women with other women, but this is not the point.

Latin Americans are all too familiar with the boom and bust cycles associated with economic populism.

Many African smallholder farmers did not share in the 'green revolution' productivity gains driven by modern seeds and techniques, irrigation, and greater fertilizer use in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s.

Growth without diversification, technological improvement, and increased productivity is easily reversed: all it takes is a dip in commodity prices.