The overall health and economy of a country depends to a large extent on the growth numbers that it is able to post year on year. In fact fast growing economies should be clocking around 9 to 10% growth, especially if they belong to the developing world because they have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to comparing their economies with the developed world. Only such a high growth will enable release of much needed funds for infrastructure and development of rural areas, the rural population where incidents of poverty and depravation of much higher.
To achieve this kind of high growth, it would not be possible to achieve it just by depending on domestic markets. Countries have to look beyond border and international trade and commerce plays a big role in development of such companies. They should look at trade markets beyond their borders and should learn to be competitive and more productive. The export market for such developing countries is indeed huge and if the government supports the entrepreneurial skill then export could be a very big driver of growth and such foreign exchange earned could be used for socially relevant projects that will help remove poverty, illiteracy and depravation.
However, for this to become a reality, the rich and developed countries have an active role to play. They cannot adopt protectionist policies and build an iron curtain to serve the domestic audience. This might look to be working in the short term but over a longer period this is bound to counter-productive because these developed markets will then shut their domestic markets for such developed countries. Hence there should be an atmosphere of give and take which benefits both the developed and developing countries. But in the game of exporting and increasing foreign exchange earnings consumer protection should be the topmost in priority and no nation cannot afford to dump substandard products in the name of international trade.