ITIF advises nations to use ICT to boost their economy.
When the Information Technology Agreement's second expansion (ITA-3) is finished, more than 400 unique information technology (ICT) items might be covered by the ITA's framework for eliminating tariffs, which would boost the global economy by more than $750 billion over the course of ten years.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), which made this disclosure, pointed out that Nigeria may get $10.3 billion of the $750 billion in a decade through the extension of trade agreements and the removal of tariffs on IT products.
The ITA, the trade agreement that eliminates tariffs on certain goods, has not been amended since 2015, despite the fact that IT is at the basis of a wide range of items that are constantly expanding. It emphasized that updating this would further increase the economic benefits highlighted previously.
Expanding the ITA could include items like 3D printers, industrial robots, commercial-use drones, patient monitoring systems and other medical devices, lithium-ion batteries, solar cells, and high-definition televisions, according to ITIF, which studied 22 countries, including Nigeria.
It estimates that during the following ten years, the world economy would increase by almost $766 billion if the 82 signatories of the original ITA joined an extended ITA-3.
Although all 22 of the nations surveyed will see greater economies over that time, the analysis revealed that India, Kenya, Pakistan, and Nigeria would experience the biggest relative gross domestic product (GDP) growth during the next ten years—2.5%, 2.3%, 2.0%, and 1.7%, respectively.
ITIF said by eliminating tariffs on trade across hundreds of ICT products, the ITA has played an indispensable role in creating “zero-in/zero-out†tariff environments that have fostered the development and diversification of ICT global value chains (GVCs), helping bring developing economies previously locked out by their prohibitively high tariffs on ICT parts, components, and equipment and undeveloped telecommunications networks into GVCs for ICT goods production and assembly.