Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 6 • Number 9 • 12th March 2002
Millions Pledged In Technical Assistance Present New Challenges To WTO
A flood of money emanating from an 11 March pledging conference for technical assistance for developing countries at the WTO has presented the organisation with a strange problem: how to effectively deploy the funds? Overall, developed countries pledged close to $US 18 million towards the Doha Development Trust Fund, a fund set up by the WTO to finance technical assistance activities aimed at improving developing countries’ participation in the new negotiations. This is twice the amount the Secretariat had requested in its Technical Assistance Plan for 2002 (see BRIDGES Weekly, 20 December 2001).
WTO Director-General Mike Moore responded with enthusiasm, saying, "This is a remarkable outcome and will help ensure that the world’s most vulnerable countries have a more effective voice in the new trade round." Developing countries also responded favourably to the amount pledged, though one Brazilian delegate indicated that market access commitments by industrialised countries would be preferable to technical assistance funding. Privately, many trade officials are concerned that the WTO lacks the institutional capacity to put all the money to use. "Money is now not the issue," said one delegate, "it’s finding the people and spending it wisely that will be the problem."
Towards that end, WTO Members agreed last week that the Secretariat could go ahead with the implementation of its revised Technical Assistance Plan for 2002 (WT/COMTD/W/95/Rev.3, searchable at http://docsonline.wto.org/gen_search.asp). In coordination with other agencies, the Plan contains a total of 514 activities and is intended to respond to the short term Trade-Related Technical Assistance (TRTA) needs of the beneficiary Members. Formal approval of the plan is pending, however: Members agreed at a 6 March meeting of the Committee on Trade and Development that the Plan was a "work in progress". Developing countries want to make sure that assistance from the WTO will focus both on increasing their knowledge base on negotiating topics mandated in the Doha Ministerial Declaration and on helping them to assess how the Doha negotiations will impact them. "Seminars alone won’t help us to negotiate," said one developing country diplomat, "we need some studies to assess what effect subsidy and industrial tariff reductions, for instance, will have on our economies."
Moore said on 11 March that there were clear limits to what the WTO could and could not do in implementing the Doha negotiations mandate. "It’s not for us to tell countries and companies to make T- shirts or shoes, build airports or seaports. Our core business in this context is helping countries build the capacity for them to successfully conclude the new round," he said. He outlined seven levels to the architecture that the WTO conceives for addressing the mandates for technical cooperation and capacity building. These are: (1) To negotiate and design effective inter-agency groups for coordinated delivery of TRTA; (2) the Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Assistance to support developing and least-developed countries in the new trade negotiations on the basis of complementary expertise of the six participating agencies; (3) the creation of a Doha/TRTA database maintaining country files that are continuously updated, recording the assistance being received from different multilateral and bilateral donors; (4) effective coordinated delivery of TRTA by the WTO and bilateral donors in the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD; (5) building a strategic partnership with the Regional Banks, Institutions and Commissions; (6) WTO Secretariat Annual Technical Assistance Plan; and (7) new oversight mechanisms to evaluate performance and delivery of programmes.
While the WTO’s Annual Technical Assistance Plan, according to the WTO, "contains those activities that the WTO Secretariat can deliver within its competence, resources, and more importantly what is possible within a 12-month calendar period," sources indicate that other agencies will have to become involved in dispensing the amount allocated towards technical assistance. In addition to regional banks, the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the UN Industrial Development Organisation have been named as possible partners in delivering technical assistance in Trade Facilitation.
Trade Facilitation, together with Investment, Competition Policy, and Transparency in Government Procurement, form the so-called "Singapore Issues". The Doha Declaration links technical assistance to the ability of developing country members and least-developed countries (LDCs) to take part in negotiations on investment and competition, and ensures "adequate" technical assistance during and after negotiations in government procurement and trade facilitation. The revised Technical Assistance Plan incorporates technical assistance programs on the Singapore issues. The inclusion of these programs, which previously were covered in a separate document, is seen by developing country Members as critical to improving the WTO’s technical assistance programs.
However, in a statement of concern over technical assistance signed by a wide range of civil society groups last week, critics of the WTO initiative indicated that the prioritisation of the Singapore issues over the needs of LDCs and developing countries to improve capacity on ongoing issues is problematic. The statement, signed by groups including the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, UK Focus on the Global South, WWF-UK (World Wide Fund for Nature), and the Swiss Coalition of Development Organizations, said that the Doha Mandate does not give priority to these issues and specifically mandates that technical assistance and capacity building be given to "better evaluate the implications" of issues such as Investment and Competition.
Inter alia, the groups urged donors to work more closely with all WTO Members and with civil society stakeholders to "define a programme for trade capacity building that will strengthen the overall capacity of these countries to identify and pursue their own trade objectives in the context of a broader development plan. To ensure that the post-Doha capacity building is indeed given in that vein, it will be important to put in place a mechanism to independently assess its effectiveness."
"Governments pledge CHF 30 million to Doha Development Agenda Global Trust Fund," WTO PRESS RELEASE, 11 March 2002; ICTSD Internal Files.