“Aid for Trade” Review at WTO in 2011

WTO members last week looked at efforts to lay the groundwork for next year’s planned examination of ongoing efforts to use trade-related development assistance to boost poor countries’ ability to participate in international commerce.

The third ‘global review’ of the WTO’s aid-for-trade initiative is scheduled to take place in July 2011. According to the WTO secretariat, the purpose of these global reviews is to put a spotlight on aid-for-trade projects, both to improve monitoring and evaluation and to encourage both donors and recipients to step up work and make projects more effective. At a 7 December meeting of the WTO Committee on Trade and Development, members took stock of work being done to prepare for the high-profile meeting.

To help governments do this, the WTO and the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which earlier developed a framework for the monitoring and evaluation of aid-for-trade efforts, have developed a series of detailed questionnaires for donors and recipients.

At the CTD meeting, Director-General Pascal Lamy urged members to provide input to the preparations for the review before the end of January 2011, pointing to the WTO/OECD questionnaires and a call for case stories about aid-for-trade projects. He noted that the Group of 20 leading economies pledged in November to maintain aid-for-trade spending at pre-crisis levels beyond 2011.

Secretariat officials described training events that were either planned or had already taken place in every developing country region to help members prepare for the aid-for-trade review.

The CTD meeting also saw members report on preparations for a major UN conference on least-developed countries (LDC-IV) scheduled to take place in Istanbul in May.