The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development is organizing a high-level conference on trade-related capacity development for selected East Asian countries.
The event will be held 5-7 February 2008 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Cham Prasidh, Minister of Commerce of Cambodia, Jean-François Desmazières, Ambassador of France to Cambodia, and Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD, will open the conference. Shyam Sundar Gupta, Minister of Commerce, Industry and Supplies of Nepal, and Siaosavath Savengsuksa, Vice-Minister of Commerce of the Lao People´s Democratic Republic, will also be among the key speakers.
The Phnom Penh conference will allow representatives from Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Lao PDR, Nepal and Viet Nam to exchange views and best practices on trade-related training and capacity-development issues. The case for an institutional framework to foster local ownership and sustainability of capacity-development activities will also be explored.
A press conference will be held in Phnom Penh on Tuesday, 5 February, featuring Mr. Cham Prasidh and Mr. Supachai.
Through its TrainForTrade programme, UNCTAD has developed a wide range of trade-related training and capacity-building activities in East and Southeast Asia. In particular, Cambodia and the Lao PDR have benefited since 2003 from a technical assistance project implemented with the financial support of the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. This programme is expected to end in 2009. An independent evaluation carried out in 2007 acknowledged its effectiveness. Requests for similar technical assistance have been formulated by Bhutan, Indonesia, Nepal and Viet Nam. The Phnom Penh conference will be an appropriate forum for discussing the implementation of TrainForTrade country-tailored programmes in the region.
This regional conference is being organized in cooperation with the Ministry of Commerce of Cambodia and with the financial support of the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.
