Aid for Trade: How ADB can help
Well before Aid for Trade, ADB has been active in trade related development. This booklet illustrates how ADB can help in Asia and the Pacific.

“Mobilizing Aid for Trade: Focus Asia and the Pacific” will bring together trade and finance ministers, key donors, and the private sector to focus collectively on the trade capacity and infrastructure challenges facing the Asia and the Pacific region.

This Aid for Trade conference aims to foster dialogue among key decision makers about what is working in the region and what is not. The result of the discussion will be a series of proposals and recommendations on how Aid for Trade should proceed within Asia and the Pacific – to encourage beneficiary countries to make trade a greater priority and to encourage aid donors to scale up trade-related official development assistance and to offer their expertise. It will also encourage stronger partnerships with the private sector to develop increased private/public financing.

Together with parallel events in Lima, Peru and in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, the Manila, Philippine meeting results will contribute to the WTO's Global Aid for Trade Review, to be held in Geneva on 20–21 November 2007.

Objectives

• Highlight the importance of the trade and growth agenda
• Identify the main trade needs and priorities for addressing them
   – both nationally and regionally
• Encourage recipient countries or subregions to formulate
   "business plans"
• Encourage donors to develop a detailed response
• Encourage private-sector partnerships
• Create a road map and timetable for action, and
• Secure the political commitment to follow through on the
   proposals

Side Events

Alongside the main ministerial event on 19-20 September 2007, two expert group meetings are also being organized which will highlight specific dimensions of Aid for Trade:

• In the framework of the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF), the World
   Trade Organization (WTO) and the ADB are organizing a Workshop on 18 September
   2007– before the start of the main ministerial meeting - to look at the role of sanitary
   and phytosanitary (SPS) capacity building in promoting the integration of developing
   countries into world trade.

• The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is also organizing
   a technical-level Practitioners Forum on the afternoon of 20 September – directly after
   the close of the main ministerial event - to address key operational aspects of the WTO
   Aid for Trade initiative. The forum provides an opportunity to learn about the WTO
   monitoring framework on aid for trade, to help shape the role and content of recipients’
   questionnaires and reports, and to establish a regional dialogue on the most recurrent
   trade capacity implementation challenges in the region. Relevant officials from all
   delegations are encouraged to attend.

Output

• A paper summarizing the discussions at the Manila event and an agenda for action in the Asia and the Pacific, which will be presented at the WTO's Global Aid for Trade Review, to be held in Geneva on 20–21 November 2007

Profile of Participants

Ministers and senior-level officials from ministries of trade and finance, leading private sector representatives, and senior managers from international organizations and donor agencies. International and Asia-Pacific participants are expected at the conference.

Background on the AfT Initiative

At the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the WTO held in Hong Kong in December 2005, Ministers launched the Aid for Trade initiative and called for the establishment of a WTO Task Force to examine ways in which Aid for Trade could be made operational and contribute to the development dimension of the Doha Development Agenda.

Aid for Trade refers to the provision of trade-related capacity building, trade-related infrastructure, supply-side capacities and, more generally, facilitation of trade-related adjustment. The Regional Development Banks strongly support this initiative as Aid For Trade can provide significant opportunities for economic development and poverty reduction. It may also contribute to enhance the participation of developing countries in world trade, thereby strengthening the multilateral trading system.

In Hong Kong, Japan announced development assistance spending on trade, production and distribution infrastructure of $10 billion over three years, the US announced Aid-for-Trade grants of $2.7 billion a year by 2010, and the EU and its member States announced trade-related development assistance spending of €2 billion per year by 2010.