Trade Policy Development - United Kingdom
Economic Partnership Agreements: DFID has extended technical and financial assistance to strengthen ACP negotiating teams at regional level through the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for West Africa, the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, the East African Community (EAC) Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC), covering Eastern and Southern Africa. Support has also been given to individual countries, including Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa, for example to help NGOs and the private sector have a voice in the negotiations process, and to help improve governments’ capacity.
Multi-donor Trust Fund – TD2: The new trust fund (MDTF-TD2) builds on the work of the first MDTF and follows the recommendations of its independent evaluation, which highlighted the need for continued analytical support to LICs . DFID’s contribution will facilitate additional demand-driven analytical work and will enable the World Bank to scale-up trade support and to engage more comprehensively on trade issues, especially those that are cross-cutting. The latter include global research and the collection, maintenance and updating of cross-country datasets and related analysis and tools. The objective of the MDTF-TD2 is to mainstream trade fully within the Bank’s country work so that, by the time it ends, trade activities are integrated seamlessly into country programmes and fully funded through the Bank’s own resources.
ITC Non-Tariff Measures Programme: DFID is funding country surveys by the ITC into NTMs and other barriers to trade. Large scale company surveys are being conducted in 30 developing countries and the results will help to inform national action in the key export sectors and key NTM issues.
The EIF is a multi-donor programme, which supports LDCs to be more active players in the global trading system by helping them tackle supply-side constraints to trade. The support helps LDCs to mainstream trade into their national development strategies, set up the structures needed to coordinate the delivery of trade-related technical assistance, and build their capacity to trade.
TAF is a £12 million commitment from 2011-2015 to help the least developed countries to perform better in international trade negotiations and advocacte for pro-poor outcomes. It provides technical and legal assistance, training, and logistical support for officials to attend negotiations.
The CARTFund is a basket fund that finances projects supporting implementation of the Caribbean’s Eco- nomic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe, and regional integration. Practical projects have focussed on areas like streamlining trade processing through single window projects, helping governments put the systems and policies in place to meet their EPA and regional integration commitments, improving capacity for product testing and quality, and supporting sector development, including specialty foods, tourism and other services and helping the private sector to access new markets.