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  The
successful result was “yet another solid step forward” for the
Doha Development Agenda, said Mr Moore during the Doha Development
Agenda Global Trust Fund (DDAGTF) Pledging Conference in Geneva, which
was attended by senior trade officials, high-ranking representatives
from International Organizations and experts on finance and
development.
“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,” said Mr Moore. “We are on schedule and ahead of target, as
promised at Doha. Donors have kept their word. We have secured a high
level of commitment to helping us meet our mandate of increasing the
level of WTO Trade-Related Technical Assistance”. Mr Moore added
that he believed the result indicated donors recognized the hard work
the WTO had done to increase transparency and accountability in its
auditing and performance-evaluation mechanisms for its programs.
Mr
Moore noted that one of the key features of the new trade round
launched last November, was that for the first time, developing
countries had put conditionality on the developed, by demanding
capacity-building and technical assistance in order to fully take
part. The Pledging Conference was convened in accordance with the
December 2001 decision by the WTO General Council to establish a sound
and predictable basis for funding WTO Trade-Related Technical
Assistance (TRTA). In that decision, the General Council set a target
amount of core funding totalling CHF 15 million. Some governments also
agreed to provide significant support in kind, including organizing
their own training courses for trade officials.
Although
developing countries world-wide will benefit from DDAGTF-financed
programs, the primary focus will be the least developed countries, and
countries without representatives in Geneva, said Mr Moore. “We have
consulted fully with all of our members, and especially the developing
countries, in order to effectively respond to their needs”.
The
successful launch of the Global Trust Fund also highlighted the
increasing acceptance amongst the multilateral institutions of the
need for greater coherence in providing resources to developing
countries, said Mr Moore. “The Doha Development Agenda established
an extensive and unprecedented agenda for trade and development,
including for TRTA, which far exceeds the delivery capacity of any one
organization," he said. “This Pledging Conference has given us
a unique opportunity to initiate an urgent and necessary policy
dialogue on several issues at the core of technical cooperation and
capacity-building. Central to current discussions on this is the
urgent necessity for coordination and coherence amongst agencies and
between agencies and the bilateral donor community”.
Mr
Moore said that there were clear limits to what the WTO could and
could not do in implementing the Doha Development Agenda. “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”.
There
are seven levels to the architecture that the WTO conceives for
addressing the mandates for technical cooperation and capacity
building. These are:
- To
negotiate and design effective inter-agency groups, focused on
issues and activities, for the coordinated delivery of TRTA.
- The
Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Assistance. The unique
aspect of the last meeting of Agency Heads was the unanimous
undertaking to support developing and least-developed countries in
the new round of trade negotiations and the negotiations of the
Doha Development Agenda, on the basis of complementary expertise
of the agencies.
- The
creation of a Doha/Trade-Related Technical Assistance Database,
which maintains a country file that is continuously updated,
recording the assistance being receiving from different
multilateral and bilateral donors.
- Effective
coordinated delivery of TRTA by the WTO and bilateral donors in
the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD.
- Building
a strategic partnership with the Regional Banks, Institutions and
Commissions. The MOU signed last month with the Inter-American
Development Bank provides a model for this sort of cooperation.
- The
WTO Secretariat-wide Annual Technical Assistance Plan, which, in
coordination with some agencies, responds to the short term TRTA
needs of the beneficiary members. The Plan is a significant step
forward in delivering on the Doha mandates. It contains a total of
514 activities. Implementation has effectively begun, and will now
be accelerated.
- New
oversight mechanisms to evaluate performance and delivery of
programmes.
“Success
breeds success, which creates confidence,” said Mr Moore. “We have
a new negotiating structure in place, chairpersons appointed to key
committees, meetings scheduled for the year for help
resource-constrained countries plan their activities, a new venue and
a host minister who is deeply engaged. Our new budget announced after
Doha greatly increased our ability to deliver in promised areas. This
very successful Pledging Conference adds to that momentum”.
He
added: “We doubled our training capacity before this conference and
our team is now engaged in creative initiatives in distance education
and using new technology to tutor students. More work will be done in
this area and announced soon. We are seeking out and negotiating with
new partners to ensure in-depth training accelerates, and is built
into our drive to build capacity for developing countries to
participate in negotiations, advance their interests, conclude
agreements and implement them”.
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