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Trade and Development Board to debate best responses to ongoing economic turbulence

16 September 2013

The 60th session of UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Board – the body that oversees the organization’s operations from year to year – will focus on how UNCTAD can help developing countries cope with altered and uncertain circumstances in the wake of the financial and economic crisis.​

The two-week series of meetings opens on Monday with the first major address by the organization's new Secretary-General, Mukhisa Kituyi. The opening plenary will also be addressed by Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari, Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage of Qatar, and President of the UNCTAD XIII quadrennial conference held in 2012.

The 16 September afternoon session will feature a high-level debate on how UNCTAD should encourage new patterns of growth for trade and development. The panellists at the debate will include Mr. Kituyi; Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union; Francis Gurry, Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization; and Abdelwahad Matar, Minister of Trade and Handicrafts of Tunisia.

A highlight of the second week of the Trade and Development Board will be "Trade Day" on 23 September, which will consider the evolution of the international trading system and its trends from a development perspective, and will feature Mr. Kituyi; Roberto Azevêdo, the new Director-General of the World Trade Organization, and new International Trade Centre Executive Director Arancha González.

Mr. Kituyi, a Kenyan national who has extensive experience in trade negotiations as well as in African and broader international economics, became UNCTAD's seventh Secretary-General on 1 September.

Additional topics to be debated at the Trade and Development Board session, which concludes on 27 September, include economic interdependence, the role played by domestic and regional demand in achieving sustainable economic growth, global value chains and their role in development, economic development in Africa, efforts to help the Least Developed Countries, and UNCTAD's assistance to the Palestinian people.