The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Dhaka

Finance Adviser Dr A B Mirza Azizul Islam at a WTO regional conference of the LDCs for the Asia- Pacific at Manila last week demanded the allocation of additional resources to promote the 'aid for trade' programme.

A senior commerce ministry official who also atended the conference told BSS today that Bangladesh had tabled a concrete proposal for the programme.

He said the finance adviser told the conference how the trade related globalization is affecting countries like Bangladesh and demanded targeted measures to shore up their owes and promote effective market access to the developed countries.

Mirza Aziz categorically demanded that whatever assistance the developed countries like the USA, EU or Japan will make to operate the aid for trade as an effective weapon to develop the trade capacity of the LDCs must come in addition to what they have already pledged at the Hong Kong WTO summit

He demanded that projects under this programme must be home grown in the context of the requirement of the individual member states, as donor driven projects only prove counter-productive at the end.

WTO director general Pascal Lamy atended the conference jointly hosted by the Asian Development Bank and the government of the Philippines.

President Gloria Arroyo inaugurated it in presence of ministers, senior government officials, business leaders and think tank persons.

Donor agencies like World Bank, European Commission, representatives of Japan, New Zealand, AusAID, USAID, OECD and leading private sector banks took part in the conference.

The aid for trade programme is a component of the WTO commitment to support the world's poorer nations with technical assistance, training and other measures to build their trade capacity, such as negotiating capacity, export diversification and infrastructure development

These are very important factors for the LDCs to fully exploit the benefit of the duty free and quota free market access to the world's industrialized economies and major developing economies.

As part of this programme, three regional conferences have been planned and the conference at Manila facilitated the regional LDC leaders to outline their ideas and present concrete proposals on how it can be effectively structured and carried out

Another such conference took place at the Peruvian capital Lima recently, while the third is scheduled for the African nations at Darus Salam.

The commerce ministry official said the recommendations of all three conferences will be presented to the WTO secretariat in November this year as part of formulating the package and make it available to the LDC member states.