Is Aid for Trade Working?
THIS is the question that WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy asked at the General Council on 21 October 2010. The focus of the Third Global Review of Aid for Trade in July 2011 would be the answers of members to this question. Lamy added, “If the global crisis had made Aid for Trade imperative for developing countries, it has also made the need to show results essential in donor countries.”
Aid for Trade aims to help developing countries, particularly least-developed countries, develop the trade-related skills and infrastructure that is needed to implement and benefit from WTO agreements and to expand their trade.
The role of the WTO is to:
++ encourage additional flows of Aid for Trade from bilateral, regional and multilateral donors to support requests for trade-related capacity building from beneficiary countries
++ support improved ways of monitoring and evaluating the initiative.
++ encourage mainstreaming of trade into national development strategies by partner countries.