Aid for Trade: Global and Regional Perspectives

Aid for Trade (AfT) has become a major item in the international trade and development discourse. This is in response to concerns expressed by developing countries in the aftermath of the formation of the WTO over their capacities to implement the WTO agreements and undertake necessary adjustments to benefit from emerging trade opportunities. The transformation of that concern into the aid for trade initiative became salient during the course of the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations over adjustment and competitiveness challenges facing developing countries, arising from, inter alia, preference erosion, textile quota elimination, implementing existing and future WTO Agreements, as well as their inherent lack of supply capacity and trade-related infrastructure deficits and deficiencies. Subsequently the Sixth WTO Ministerial Declaration endorsed the concept of aid for trade and mandated the establishment of a Task Force to operationalize the concept and the Director General of the WTO to consult on financing for the initiative. The WTO Task Force was composed, met and issued a report with recommendations that was endorsed by WTO members.Various initiatives by UN agencies including UNCTAD and regional commissions have been implemented to sustain the momentum towards the operationalization and implementation of the aid for trade initiative. The UN system is supportive of the aid for trade initiative and its developmental goals, as committed in the 2005 World Summit Outcome. To this end, to be instrumental, the UN system needs to promote a more coherent approach and support towards the implementation of the AfT initiative. The objective of this World Report is to offer an UN-wide coherent perspective and a comprehensive contribution to the international policy debate on how to practically operationalize the AfT initiative and ensure that it contributes most effectively to the development dimension of the WTO negotiations. Global perspectives as well as regional and national perspectives on the challenges and opportunities in demanding and supplying aid for trade consistent with the recommendations of the WTO Task Force.