UNCTAD this week announced a capacity-building and technical assistance programme to help developing countries in the post-Doha trade negotiations now under way.
The programme focuses on priority issues in trade, investment, trade facilitation and electronic commerce and involves policy analysis, human resources development and institutional capacity-building. It is a direct result of UNCTAD´s assessment of the results of Doha, as presented this week by Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of UNCTAD.
Mr. Ricupero will elaborate on UNCTAD´s post-Doha action and on his assessments of the Conference´s outcome at a press conference in Geneva scheduled for 10.30 a.m., Thursday 7 February.
"The next few months will be a key test for the multilateral trading system", given the short timespan remaining between now and the next WTO Ministerial in 2003, he said, announcing the programme at a meeting on Monday of UNCTAD´s Commission on Trade in Goods and Services, and Commodities. The programme was designed to meet that challenge, and was "demand-driven" and "tailor-made", based on consultations with its potential beneficiaries - developing countries - and adapted to the specificities of that heterogeneous group. It also provided an opportunity for enhancing cooperation with other international and regional institutions, particularly the WTO.
UNCTAD plans to begin work on the programme immediately and will implement it as donor resources become available in accordance with the commitments agreed at Doha.
Mr. Ricupero termed the programme "ambitious" but at the same time warned that "we should not expect too much of technical assistance to support the negotiating capacity of developing countries". Trade negotiations are "necessary, but in themselves not sufficient conditions for development", he said. They create opportunities, but opportunities are "useless if countries lack the means to take advantage of them. At the end of the day, for all developing countries, the capacity to overcome supply constraints is what really determines the quality of their participation in the trading system".
Seizing opportunities
Making the "best possible use" of the opportunities opened by Doha was "the number-one question for the international community", Mr. Ricupero added. Those opportunities lay in the fact that all the issues put forward by developing countries since before the 1999 WTO Conference in Seattle were still "on the table" and potentially part of the new negotiations, and that many other issues of interest to those countries could also be addressed before the next Ministerial Conference in 2003 - if the agreed deadlines are met.
The two new WTO working groups on trade, debt and finance and transfer of technology provided yet another opportunity - one in which to examine how those issues could be taken into account in trade negotiations in an operational fashion, he said. UNCTAD stood ready to support the active participation of developing countries and transition economies in those issues, which "would probably become the ´Doha´ issues that enlarge the trade agenda".
He said that the work launched at Doha on investment, competition, government procurement and trade facilitation - the so-called "Singapore issues" that had in turn enlarged the trade agenda since the 1996 Ministerial - could succeed "only if the development content of these issues is clearly established from the outset". The term "development agenda" would have real meaning "insofar as the final outcome of the negotiations provides concrete results" for developing countries´ interests, as in the area of agriculture and services.
Memorandum of Understanding to be signed
In a related development, this evening UNCTAD will sign a memorandum of understanding with the Geneva-based Agency for International Trade Information and Cooperation (AITIC) to help developing countries and transition economies enhance their participation in the current WTO negotiations. Together, the two organizations will organize training and capacity-building activities, provide analytical and methodological tools for preparing negotiating positions and proposals and furnish and exchange information on regional and preferential trade arrangements of interest to developing countries.
