Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what discussions he had at the most recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on the effect of Economic Partnership Agreements on developing countries in the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth is a strong and powerful network of nations. Intra-Commonwealth trade in goods and services is estimated to be $560 billion and projected to reach $700bn by 2020[1] and in 2016, UK-Commonwealth trade stood at £94 billion[2].

Britain is an international leader on development, and the Department for International Trade is working with the Department for International Development to ensure global prosperity is at the heart of our future trade policy. We are committed to ensuring developing countries in the Commonwealth can use trade as an engine of poverty reduction, and trade agreements play an important role in this.

This department continues to work with Commonwealth countries that are part of the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) or other preferential arrangements to ensure that there is no disruption to our existing trade as we leave the EU. At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting we highlighted progress made in the transition of our trading relationships with these partners.

[1] Source: Commonwealth Secretariat Report

[2] Source: DIT analysis of ONS data