UPLB joins the discussion about global business and trade as one of the organizers of an international conference.
The 27th Biannual Conference and Research Symposium led by the International Academy of Global Business and Trade (IAGBT) and the Korea International Trade Research Institute (KITRI), held online from January 20 to 22, was attended by over 250 participants in 14 countries.
With the theme “Capturing Value in Global Business and Trade in Volatile Times,” the conference featured research on global business and trade and exchange insights and analysis with key players who are crucial in developing vital innovation to drive economic growth in volatile times.
Prof. Soonhwan Jeon, Chairman of IAGBT and President of KITRI, expressed his sincere gratitude to UPLB for its continuous support of the conference in his opening remarks. He excitedly announced that the Journal of Global Business and Trade (JGBT) was already indexed in Scopus last November 2021. He also said he is looking forward to IAGBT becoming a world-renowned academic association. Prof. Jeon encouraged the participants to discover new opportunities in the fast-growing area of global business and trade.
In his welcome speech, Chancellor Jose V. Camacho, Jr. recognized the current challenges in global business and trade. He said that the conference is very appropriate in the present circumstances where economic stability is hard to achieve because of the new COVID variants coming after another. Chancellor Camacho expressed optimism and said there is already a light in the tunnel as economies, businesses, and people worldwide have responded and adapted to these challenges. He also said that the conference presents an excellent opportunity to understand how the pandemic has changed the economic landscape and encouraged the participants to harness this understanding towards creating value to establish new knowledge and practices to help various communities in the new and next normal.
Vice Chancellor for Research and Extension Nathaniel C. Bantayan, in his closing speech, congratulated UPLB and IAGBT-KITRI for a very successful conference. He hopes that the new approaches, ideas, and perspectives brought out in the conference would create partnerships and opportunities to help respective institutions strengthen their capacity to face uncertainties and influence societies to stir towards the path of sustainable development.
At the end of the conference, UPLB graduate student Brian Jason H. Ponce (MS Economics) was recognized with the Best Paper Award for his research paper, “Analyzing Pollution Emissions and Economic Growth in Asia through the Lens of the Environmental Kuznets Curve.” (JSCabral)
