|
The OECD Development Assistance Committee held a Special Meeting on Aid for Trade, following up on recent discussions held on the topic in Washington (Development Committee, September 2005) and Gleneagles (G8 Summit, July 2005).
Aid for trade is increasingly considered as a critical element to successfully complete the WTO Doha Development Agenda. For instance, the need for further increases has been reiterated in the 2004 WTO July Framework Agreement, with specific references to existing and new commitments. Although, as shown in the latest WTO/OECD Report, the overall volume of trade-related technical assistance and capacity building has increased in recent years and may continue to do so, there are strong calls for the Doha Development Agenda to be supplemented by a substantial "aid for trade package" to support developing countries’ integration into the global economy. The basic argument to increase the volume of aid for trade and to deliver it more effectively is that strengthening developing countries’ abilities to trade constitutes a potentially powerful mechanism to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
The Special Meeting was co-chaired by Ambassador Mia Horn af Rantzien, Permanent Representative of Sweden to the WTO, Ambassador Valentine Rugwabiza, Deputy Director General of the WTO and Richard Manning, DAC Chair. Delegates represented the development and trade policy communities in OECD Member States, International Financial Institutions and Members of the Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to the Least Developed Countries (IF).
The discussion focused on two main issues:
- How to improve the effectiveness of aid for trade and the mechanisms to deliver it, in particular the current proposals for further enhancing the Integrated Framework (IF) ?; and
- How to leverage resources to support trade-related technical assistance and capacity building?
|
