Trade officials discuss Regional Aid for Trade Strategy
High level trade officials from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have ended a two-day meeting here validating the draft of the Caribbean Community Regional Aid for Trade (AfT) Strategy ahead of the upcoming Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) meeting.
The Aid For Trade Initiative helps support developing countries, in particular the least developed, to build the trade capacity and infrastructure they need to benefit from trade opening.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has taken the lead in the monitoring and evaluation of Aid for Trade and has partnered with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and other development institutions to spearhead the initiative in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The officials met here for the two-day meeting that ended on Friday where the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Bentley Gibbs noted that the purpose of the dialogue is to “determine how to mobilize and access resources under the Aid for Trade platform.
“We have a credible Strategy which should provide the framework for identifying the grant and lending resources needed to support interventions.”
An IDB statement issued at the end of the meeting said that overcoming the constraints of inadequate infrastructure, limited institutional capacity, concentrated export-oriented productive capacity and weak participation in regional and global value chains, are among the main issues highlighted by the AfT Strategy.
“In order to address these constraints, the AfT Strategy proposes three main goals: upgrading key economic infrastructure; facilitating trade expansion and private sector development; and strengthening CARICOM and Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) integration.”
It said that for each goal, a selected number of regional and national programs are identified with the aim of better matching development partners' Aid for Trade with the priorities of the region.
The AfT Strategy identifies priorities for trade-related technical and financial support, proposes remedial programs and projects, and details a regional and national monitoring and evaluation framework.
The Trade and Integration Network of the Regional Policy Dialogue provides a forum for discussion and knowledge sharing between the policymakers of Latin America and the Caribbean and the Bank in key topics related to regional and global trade and integration
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| Date Posted | November 05 2012 |