Critical Issue in Business Management A2 by Bruna Amaral de Lima https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0 LSBM303 en-us 2021-12-21 14:07:58 UTC 2026-03-17 14:01:58 UTC hello@padlet.com The Commonwealth is a group of 54 independent nations and is headed by Queen Elizabeth II. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020).The pandemic of COVID-19 has severely affected the world economy creating a huge catastrophe in the international trade sector (WTO, 2020). The lockdowns restrictions affected various sectors of economic activity in many countries. The catastrophe in the financial sector had not been seen since the 1930s in the macroeconomic sector (Blake and Wadhwa, 2020). Hevia and Neumeyer, 2020). Supply and demand sectors were directly affected (Lakatos, 2020). All 54 Commonwealth countries were affected and devastated 45 Commonwealth economies gross domestic product (GDP), which declined by $1.45 million in just one year. The export sector has lost about $345 million and the trade sector about $60 million across the Commonwealth countries. Adding to export problems, people from poorer commonwealth countries were also affected in the Covid-19 pandemic because they did not get financial aid like developed countries like the UK population that were aided with furloughs. Similarly, the vaccine that was first made available to and hoarded by rich Commonwealth countries (The Commonwealth, 2021) exposing and widening the divide between developed and developing commonwealth countries.During the Covid-19 pandemic, India's WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) Exports of Services were affected in various sectors such as cross-border trade using the internet, export, import and domestic trade in the country. With the trade shut down, there has been an exorbitant drop in the number of purchases between traders and retailers and the number of foreigners has drastically decreased in India with the lockdown. The pandemic brought tragic consequences causing over 1 million deaths worldwide, lung injuries and 20 million different infections (Roser et al., 2020).According to the survey, the number of online shopping has declined by 60%, the number of traders by 21%, and the number of foreign and expatriate consumers by 11%. With the new adaptations and social distancing rules, CEOs have adapted their meetings and negotiations using the internet as the main tool. Research shows that around 60% of global exports are done in person, compared to 27% of service exports done through online meetings (The Commonwealth, 2021). Countries such as the US, China, UK, Singapore and Japan export between 40% and 60% of their products and have had to adapt face-to-face meetings and negotiations to online meetings and negotiations (Veeramani, 2021). In 2020, after the economic downturn, there was an estimated 10% growth in agreements between Commonwealth countries, and some countries were able to resume trade production negotiations faster than others. bruna_0900 https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1983436505 2022-01-10 09:26:19 UTC https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1983436505 bruna_0900 https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988147389 2022-01-12 13:02:27 UTC https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988147389 bruna_0900 https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988150734 Ali et al, 2020).
 
Figure 2- Demonstrates the vulnerability of Commonwealth countries in the trade sector. It then shows that 75% of the Commonwealth's global and intra-community trade is in manufactured goods and commodities and indicates that some Commonwealth countries that are in the growth range have an average of around 40% to 95% commodity exports which sets them apart from the other countries that average 30%.
]]> 2022-01-12 13:04:35 UTC https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988150734 bruna_0900 https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988151923 Figure 3- Shows the economic situation in Commonwealth countries and how prices and commodities have fallen and been negatively affected. Commonwealth countries export about 22% of the food, 36% of minerals and 42% of most affected fuels. The major exporters are China, the USA, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia, which purchase about 55% of all the products mentioned above. With the pandemic, there has been a reduction in demand for the products and this has led to an increase in prices and excesses in supermarkets, limiting the limit of purchases. Commonwealth countries lost approximately $125 million in exports in 2020.]]> 2022-01-12 13:05:22 UTC https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988151923 The increase in quality internet is increasing the knowledge of the population, helping people and communities, enabling countries to develop their potential, increase GDP, improve infrastructure, health conditions and education opportunities of their countries. The poorest Commonwealth countries will benefit as they have broadband 11 times more expensive than developed countries like the UK (Banga, K. and Raga, S., 2021).The internet will benefit the population in reducing footprint, document storage, more sustainability and less pollution, use of documents with electronic or digital signatures, among others (Anand, 2021).The Commonwealth countries next projects are related to help poorer countries develop financially such: technology improvement, creating opportunities in trade negotiations investing in global trade, importing goods at competitive prices, providing loans to banks, suppliers, and small businesses. The countries on the list will be Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Grenada, Gambia, Jamaica, Kenya, Malawi, Lesotho, Seychelles and Sri Lanka (The commonwealth, 2021). bruna_0900 https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988153570 2022-01-12 13:06:15 UTC https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988153570 Commonwealth countries bruna_0900 https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988154330 (The Commonwealth, 2021).]]> 2022-01-12 13:06:44 UTC https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1988154330 https://youtu.be/i_TQsM1HQU0 bruna_0900 https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1990585786 2022-01-13 15:19:56 UTC https://padlet.com/bruna_0900/hstpz154jatas6t0/wish/1990585786