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Launching of the first Aid for Trade at a Glance report
Global Review | Country & Agency Chapters | Creditor Reporting System Profiles
The OECD and the World Trade Organization have worked closely together to establish a joint aid-for-trade monitoring framework. Their new global monitoring report, Aid for Trade at a Glance 2007, takes stock of the trends and developments in aid flows between 2002 and 2005 that are most closely related to aid for trade, as defined by the WTO Task Force and subsequently endorsed by the WTO General Council. It also sets out the OECD/WTO monitoring framework and provides an overview of a survey sent to donor and partner countries to gather information about their aid-for-trade strategies, pledges and delivery. With the aim of improving the impact of the aid-for-trade monitoring exercise, a series of Regional Aid for Trade Practitioners Fora was also organised in collaboration with the WTO and the regional development banks.
The first Aid for Trade at a Glance report was presented by the OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría (speech) at the High-level segment of the Global Review of Aid for Trade on 20 November 2007.
BACKGROUND
Many developing countries, in particular the least developed, face supply-side constraints that severely limit their ability to benefit from the multilateral trading system. In recognition of these challenges, the 2005 Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Declaration called for the expansion and improvement of aid for trade and set in motion a process to achieve this. A WTO Task Force came up with a set of recommendations and called for strengthening of the "demand side" and the donor "response"; it also advocated closing the gap between "demand" and "response" at the country, regional and global levels, giving a monitoring role to the WTO.
In 2006, the WTO members agreed to monitor aid for trade, formally launching the WTO-led initiative. The new monitoring system is expected to create incentives – through enhanced transparency, scrutiny and dialogue – for providing more and improved aid for trade. It is about sharing information, learning from successes as well as failures, and applying the policies and approaches that we know to be effective, as embodied in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
THE ROLE OF THE OECD AND THE DAC
The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) is helping to tackle the challenge of how poorer countries can benefit more from trade. It examines, in particular, the following three issues:
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How much aid do donors already provide in support of trade?
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How effective are these programmes?
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How can aid for trade help developing countries, particularly the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), to fully benefit from trade liberalisation and WTO agreements?
Together with the Working Party of the Trade Committee, DAC is working to make aid for trade more effective by strengthening the integration of trade in development programmes, developing impartial and reliable tools to assess aid-for-trade programmes, and fostering dialogue and knowledge-sharing among stakeholders.
In November 2006, the OECD organised the Policy Dialogue with Non-Members on Aid for Trade conference in Doha, Qatar which brought together a wide range of stakeholders from developing and developed countries to share experiences and information on how best to support developing countries' trade expansion and make it an engine of economic growth and poverty reduction.
www.oecd.org/dac/trade/aft
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