Compliance support infrastructure and services - United States of America
The overall mission of AGCI is to promote the export competitiveness of sub-Saharan Africa enterprises in order to expand African trade. This mission is to be achieved through a number of objectives, such as improving the business and regulatory environment for private sector-led trade and investment. One of the key factors to improving the business and regulatory environment for trade and investment is to strengthen intellectual property protection.
FY 2011 US Government funds will be spent for the new program started in October 2010- Azerbaijan Trade and Competitiveness Project (ACT). ACT is focused at technical assistance on WTO related process and reforms, trade enabling environment as well as value chains.
Part of the African Global Competitiveness Initiative (AGCI), the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) programme includes capacity building in plant health, animal health and food safety systems. The emphasis is on harmonizing SPS regulations with the international standard-setting bodies and increasing export opportunities for plant, horticultural, and animal products through scientific and regulatory capacity building. Through 2011, USAID funding assistance has totaled more than $US6.6 Million.
The U.S. Codex Office provides USDA with funds to facilitate, manage, and implement regional and/or country-specific outreach activities on Codex Alimentarius-related matters. Meetings, workshops and seminars are organized on the subjects of food safety guidelines and avoidance of potential barriers to sanitary-phytosanitary protocols. The seminars are attended by medium to high level policy makers throughout the respective regions of the world.
It is a capacity-building programme and study tour for senior judicial and public prosecutorial officials. The programme included topics on the investigation and prosecution of intellectual property rights (IPR), crime, and the importance of enforcing IPR to economic development and attracting foreign investment. The programme includes practical case studies on judicial case management and judicial mediation of IPR disputes, as well as visits to courts in the United States.
This project, funded by USAID, was launched in 2006. It aims to assist the competent authorities of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) countries to understand and meet international obligations related to sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulatory procedures and practices. This is a government-to-government activity to provide technical training to: (i) address all missions, policies and procedures related to the agricultural trade of each agency, including animal and plant health and food safety; (ii) assess the regulatory status of each participating country; and (iii) develop an action plan for additional training as needed. Accomplishments have been that countries are able to meet the requirements of the treaty, detention levels at the borders are reduced, pre-shipment pest inspections are improved, and pepper exports to the United States have increased. USAID has spent more than US$2 Million in FYs 2010 – 2011 on this programme.
Role Of The Judiciary In Enforcement. On June 20-23, 2011 in Lagos, Nigeria, DOJ participated as faculty at the 9th Intellectual Property Crime INTERPOL IPR Program, a three-day integrated training for 50 members from the Nigerian police, customs, IP unit, copyright commission, and customs service.
The objectives of the program are to (1) strengthen the ASEAN institutional platform for improving regional food security and (2) increase private sector engagement and partnerships in regional agriculture. Specifically, the program will seek to address cross-border challenges related to key food security issues such as food commodity trade, policy and regulatory reform, harmonization of standards, and adoption and utilization of technology, as well as leveraging private sector participation.
PRICE works with small/medium businesses by supporting equitable growth throughout the aquaculture, horticulture, leather value chains. Women and young entrepreneurs are a focus. PRICE develops business support services that help enhance products for export and reduce barriers to trade. Current activities: social and quality compliance for aquaculture products to meet standards for export to the US and EU, assisting leather products manufacturers in designing new products for the export market.