The Director General of the WTO outlined the new roadmap for the Aid-for-Trade program at a meeting of the Committee on Trade and Development on February 25. The roadmap emphasizes three points: monitoring, implementation, and greater involvement of developing nations.
Improved monitoring of increased trade flows and the direct impact of projects would allow goals to be set and progress to be measured. The Director General has asked the OECD and World Bank to consider what indexes and performance indicators could assist in measurement of progress. Following the advice of the Regional Reviews, implementation of programs will be emphasized by creation of national and sub-regional Aid-for-Trade Reviews in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. The Reviews would have the goal of highlighting successful strategies and creating incentives for implementation of programs. Finally, the roadmap proposes that developing nations take a more active role in the administration of the program as a way of more effectively mobilizing domestic and international constituencies.
Director General Pascal Lamy’s speech is available here.