Aid for Trade

Trade and international trade cooperation as a tool for LDCs to adapt to climate change
LDCs need support to tackle the climate crisis to safeguard and further advance the hard-earned improvements in incomes, education and health achieved over the past decades. To successfully mitigate and adapt to climate change, LDCs have to address several challenges and strengthen their policy frameworks. Not only do they need to enhance the climate-resilience of their trade-related infrastructure but also to improve their digital connectivity. The latter will play a key role in addressing information asymmetries and broadening the reach of early warning systems.

LDCs need to be rewarded for their low emissions through better trade deals
Countries with high environmental credentials like Bhutan should be supported to trade with an automatic recognition and prioritization of their exports as clean and green. This will be a big boost to build productive capacity and help increase climate and trade ambition.

Aid for trade should be a catalyst for climate finance
While leveraging AFT to mobilize climate finance is an imperative for LDCs, this cannot be achieved without improved government-wide coordination, policy reforms to improve business environments, capacity building to attract and retain investment as well as contribution of resources and expertise to mobilize additional funding. Such an approach, while facilitating collective engagement to unleash the power of partnership, can make a difference to ensure that climate change adaptation and mitigation needs of LDCs are adequately funded.

Importance of building evidence for gender-sensitive trade policies
Building evidence does not only happen through research and analysis; it also comes from sharing experiences. For example, EIF support has been directed to sectors in which women are predominantly engaged, so female-owned businesses can expand and access new regional and global markets. Responses to the M&E exercise indicate a wide recognition that these efforts result in strengthening women’s economic and financial independence.

How can we harness aid for trade for a just transition to sustainable trade?
In 2022, WTO members have the opportunity to move forward on an aid for trade agenda that supports LDCs to tackle pressing challenges at the intersection of trade and sustainability. Given the massive trade-related challenges facing LDCs, the huge gap between needs and available support for a just transition to sustainable trade, and the urgency, scale, and impact of intersecting environmental crises in LDCs, mobilizing additional resources, investments, and partnerships is vital.

6 things to know about Aid for Trade
Trade continues to play an important driving force not just of economic growth, but also poverty alleviation. Recognizing the role that trade can play in development, the WTO Aid-for-Trade Initiative seeks to mobilize resources to address trade-related constraints identified by developing and least-developed countries. But against the backdrop of multiple crises affecting the world economy, this task is challenging.

It's time for public-private partnerships to drive digital trade in the most vulnerable nations
Unlike in 2013, PPPs are today widely embraced as a vehicle to promote digital trade. Now, they need to be used in places where they have been scarcer, such as the LDCs.

The role of WTO Aid for Trade in actualizing an inclusive circular economy
The Aid for Trade initiative could also become an important platform to encourage collaboration between donor and recipient countries on shared circular economy trade related opportunities and challenges going forward.

Beyond ODA and Aid for Trade: The critical value of alternative trade funding
The Enhanced Integrated Framework has remained a key conduit for both channelling and leveraging wider Aid for Trade resources to the LDCs over the past decade but also has the mandate to support LDCs expand their trade funding base.

Plastic pollution: Can aid for trade help least developed countries tackle this crisis?
LDCs have to deal with millions of tonnes of plastic products imported each year, including products with embedded plastics and with associated plastic packaging.

Women play a key role in fighting climate change
Women are 14 times more likely to die from a climate disaster than men. Despite being face-to-face with the problem, women are often not part of the solution.

How COVID-19 is accelerating the use of digital tech in agriculture in East Africa
Adoption of apps is facilitating farmers and businesses

Tools and finance to help transform least developed country economies
Transforming the economies of least developed countries (LDCs) requires a nationally supported vision on how to tackle the binding constraints to higher value-added production.

Ambassador Morten Jespersen: Looking at aid funding, the private sector and country visions – where are LDCs now?
EIF’s Steering Committee Chair talks donor priorities, laying the groundwork for investment in LDCs and more

Germany commits fresh funding to Enhanced Integrated Framework
On 17 December 2019, the Government of Germany announced an additional commitment of EUR 1.3 million to the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF).

5 ways to boost sustainable trade in the world’s poorest countries
Originally published by World Economic Forum Agenda on 4 July 2019

A strategy to leverage the digital transformation for development
The digital transformation provides developing economies new opportunities to leapfrog industrial age infrastructure, to draw on the vast knowledge spillovers from the internet, to take advantage of new markets offered by digital platforms and to exploit production possibilities enabled by digital technologies.

For trade development, shifting from fragility to resilience
The relative importance of trade and the degree of export concentration are higher than average in fragile least developed countries (LDCs).

Aid for trade, economic diversification and empowerment in the least developed countries
Economic diversification and empowerment are essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals; they also embody the rationale behind the Aid for Trade Initiative.

The African Continental Free Trade Area: Dawn of a new era
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will transform the way Africa trades, with intra-African trade expected to increase by 15-25 per cent, and the boost to trade in industrial goods accelerating diversification of Africa’s economies.

In Malawi, bolstering youth and women’s employment through sectoral skills strategies
Skills strategies can provide a bridging mechanism to enable disadvantaged groups such as youth and women to gain from international trade.

Economic diversification: Why trade matters
Economic diversification is a key element of development in which a country moves to a more diverse production structure, scaling-up resilience to external shocks and providing a path for equitable growth.

Fisheries subsidies negotiations: What is at stake for least developed countries?
Fisheries are a crucial source of animal protein, livelihoods and export earnings for many developing countries, including several least developed countries.

Global value chains and development paths: A conversation with Caroline Freund
Talking global value chains and trade integration, ahead of forthcoming World Bank report

Tentative steps to implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement in least developed countries
Agreement provides least developed countries with novel provisions, with consultation needs taking centre stage

EIF launches policy series on all things LDCs and Aid for Trade
Examining Aid for Trade and LDCs, aiming for evidence-based action

What to expect from WTO's 2019 Global Review of Aid for Trade
See what lies ahead at the biennial Aid for Trade event in July 2019

Aiming for major trade outcomes, EIF launches Strategic Plan 2019-2022
Aligned with the Global Goals, plan has elevated efforts and new targets

In fast-evolving trade landscape, addressing the structural challenges
WTO’s Aid for Trade programme putting a spotlight on LDCs

Making Aid for Trade work for women
Originally published in International Trade Forum