As part of a broader project to assist the Dominican Republic to formulate its trade strategy for 2016-2020, UNCTAD is assisting the Government in the preparation of a comprehensive trade policy framework.
The objective of the Trade Policy Framework project is to analyse the Dominican Republic's trade policy, trade performance and trade impact, with a view to produce recommendations to strengthen policy coherence in order to:
Enhance export opportunities
Develop productive capacities in resilient economic sectors (key products and services) that foster poverty reduction, decent employment and other developmental objectives.
Under the Trade Policy Framework project a joint UNCTAD-Government of Dominican Republic consultative workshop with stakeholders was held from 3 to 4 September, in Santo Domingo. The event reviewed the preliminary findings of research conducted in four main areas:
The policy framework for production and competitiveness
Trade performance
Implementation and utilisation of opportunities derived from trade agreements
Strategies, policy objectives and institutional setting related to trade policy-making.
The discussions with stakeholders addressed problematic issues in each of these four areas, obtaining stakeholders' views and proposals on policy objectives, strategies, expected results and strengthened institutional setting to formulate the Dominican Republic trade strategy 2016-2020.
Thus, these discussions facilitated the collecting of valuable inputs for the next step in this project. This step consist of further developing the recommendations for a new vision and strategies, as well as for mechanisms for implementing, monitoring and reviewing the Dominican Republic trade strategy 2016-2020.
It is expected that the Trade Policy Framework study of the Dominican Republic will be completed in November 2015.
Participants
Around 40 participants attended this event.
Government stakeholders included representatives from: the Vice Ministry of Internal Trade; the Vice Ministry for Free Zones; Vice Ministry for Small and Medium Enterprises; Dominican Institute for Quality; Ministry of Foreign Trade; Ministry of Finance; Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development; National Council for Competitiveness; Central Bank; Centre for the Promotion of Exports and Investment; Ministry of Industry; Customs agency; Statistics agency and Division of Trade Agreements from the Ministry of Trade.
Stakeholders from the private sector included representatives from several industry associations, the Chamber of Commerce of Santo Domingo, the National Association of Young Entrepreneurs and the Dominican Federation of Chambers of Commerce.
UNCTAD's Trade Policy Framework studies The studies provide recommendations to Governments on strengthening policy coherence to enhance export opportunities and developing productive capacities in resilient economic sectors that foster national developmental objectives. They aim to contribute to reformulating and implementing national trade policy regimes according to country's needs and priorities. Trade Policy Frameworks prepared by UNCTAD in support of developing countries include those for Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Tunisia and Rwanda, while work is in progress in supporting Zambia, Angola, Panama and Namibia. |