Geneva: In a world buffeted by the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, food insecurity and climate change, the 2022 Aid for Trade Global Review opened on July 27, 2022, at the World Trade Organization with a focus on how Aid for Trade can help the developing and least developed countries recover from multiple crises and build resilience to ensure long-term sustainable development.
In her remarks to the opening plenary session, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told participants that the future of trade will increasingly focus on three key issues that are the themes of this year’s Global Review: sustainable development, digital connectivity and women’s economic empowerment.
“The Aid for Trade initiative can and should aim to help develop critical trade infrastructure while supporting climate-friendly, resilient and socio-economically inclusive outcomes,” she declared.
A joint Aid for Trade at a Glance 2022 report issued today by the WTO and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development notes that Aid for Trade commitments increased by 18 per cent in 2020, reaching an all-time high of USD 64.6 billion. A total of USD 556 billion in Aid for Trade was disbursed between 2006 and 2020. The report shows that 51 per cent of the Aid for Trade commitments made in 2020, worth about USD 33 billion, include climate-related objectives.
Aid for Trade disbursements for digital connectivity and e-commerce has increased by 23 per cent since 2018 but, at USD 487 million, still accounted for a modest 1 per cent of expenditure in 2020.
The Director-General issued a call for increased private sector involvement in trade-related development assistance to ensure recovery and resilience. She suggested rebranding “Aid for Trade” as “Investment for Trade” in order to underline the importance of greater public-private sector cooperation.
“We need to keep working to reinvigorate the multilateral trading system, and Aid for Trade is part of ensuring that developing and least developed countries, who have been so hard hit by the pandemic, by the consequences of the Ukraine war, by climate change, benefit from the multilateral trading system,” she said.
The WTO-led Aid-for-Trade initiative encourages developing country governments and donors to recognize the role that trade can play in development. In particular, the initiative seeks to mobilize resources to address the trade-related constraints identified by developing and least-developed countries.
The purpose of the Global Review is to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation of Aid for Trade to provide an incentive to both donors and recipients for advancing the Aid for Trade agenda.
Noting that the “poorest of the poor are hit the hardest” by the current polycrisis, Gerd Müller, Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, issued a call for a transition from free trade to fair trade.
Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon, President of the Caribbean Development Bank, said the absence of capacity to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and build resilience “is the fundamental issue that we need to face going forward.”
“Trade drives development. Without that, the ability to recover, the ability to generate resilience is not going to occur,” he noted. But “without adequate and affordable finance, there is no way you can advance either the development or deployment of activities that can allow trade.”
– global bihari bureau
