UN General Assembly
2019

Sustainable development has become a priority for all countries. We all face common challenges — creating jobs, raising standards of living and eradicating poverty. However, it is very difficult for any country to develop and progress on its own. Growth requires trade, investment and technology and all those activities depend on working with others, within an open and orderly international framework of rules. That has been how many countries have progressed in the past 70 years since the Second World War. Developed countries opened up their own markets and benefited in return from access to new markets in the developing world for their industrial products, such as aircraft, electronic devices and machine tools. China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 presaged two decades of dramatic economic growth, which lifted more than 850 million people out of poverty. India, too, has grown steadily since the 1990s, as its economy has gradually liberalized and become more integrated with those of its partners. Before that, other smaller economies in East and South-East Asia, including Singapore, travelled that same path.