PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti–Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WTO) Pas­cal Lamy has urged de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to en­sure they have the nec­es­sary trade ca­pac­i­ty to take ad­van­tage of a chang­ing glob­al en­vi­ron­ment.Ad­dress­ing the launch of the Caribbean Re­gion­al Aid for Trade (AFT) Strat­e­gy, Lamy said hav­ing trade op­por­tu­ni­ties is not enough.

"We must trans­late the "trade can" in­to the "trade has" by en­sur­ing de­vel­op­ing coun­tries have built the nec­es­sary trade ca­pac­i­ty. And this is what Aid for Trade is about: help­ing trans­form trade op­por­tu­ni­ties in­to trade re­al­i­ties."Aid for Trade refers to the flow of de­vel­op­ment fi­nance from de­vel­oped coun­tries and mul­ti­lat­er­al fund­ing agen­cies to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to en­hance their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the mul­ti­lat­er­al trad­ing sys­tem.

The Caribbean strat­e­gy, which was de­vel­oped with the as­sis­tance of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), aims to cre­ate con­sen­sus with­in Cari­com on pri­or­i­ties for en­sur­ing growth and a more di­ver­si­fied re­gion­al econ­o­my.It presents a co­her­ent ap­proach to ob­tain­ing fund­ing and pro­vides a frame­work for col­lab­o­ra­tion among Cari­com mem­ber states and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment part­ners (IDPs) or in­vestors with an in­ter­est in pro­vid­ing sup­port for the Re­gion's de­vel­op­ment.

The IDB, along with the In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­tre (ITC), the WTO and the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency all have col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at for the launch of the strat­e­gy un­der the theme Turn­ing Mar­ket Ac­cess In­to Mar­ket Pres­ence.Lamy said four years ago he met with Cari­com on the AFT and his mes­sage was that the strat­e­gy was a plat­form for the re­gion around which the de­vel­op­ment part­ners and pri­vate in­vestors could co­a­lesce.

"Since that time, the glob­al Aid for Trade agen­da has con­tin­ued to ma­ture. Tes­ta­ment to this is the fo­cus of the 4th Glob­al Re­view of Aid for Trade on con­nect­ing de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to val­ue chains and high­light­ing the grow­ing role of the pri­vate sec­tor," he said.The WTO of­fi­cial said the re­gion had made some ini­tial, but cru­cial steps in con­cretis­ing the role that Aid for Trade can play in its eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

He said Be­lize and Ja­maica have launched two "ex­cel­lent" na­tion­al strate­gies, both of which were pro­filed in Gene­va as ex­am­ples of best prac­tice, and for the past year the re­gion has been ac­tive­ly work­ing on a re­gion­al strat­e­gy.He said now it is time to fo­cus on ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion, mon­i­tor­ing of the strat­e­gy at the na­tion­al and re­gion­al lev­el and al­low­ing this to be the blue­print for the re­gion's di­a­logue with de­vel­op­ment part­ners and do­mes­tic and for­eign in­vestors.

"This process will not be an au­to­mat­ic one. This strat­e­gy is be­ing launched in a pe­ri­od of in­creas­ing strains on the bud­gets of your tra­di­tion­al de­vel­op­ment part­ners," Lamy said, not­ing that al­though the re­source mo­bil­i­sa­tion pil­lar of AFT has been suc­cess­ful, it is al­so clear that a tough pe­ri­od lies ahead.

The Caribbean re­gion reg­is­tered close to one bil­lion US dol­lars in Aid for Trade com­mit­ments in 2011, which is a sub­stan­tial in­crease over the base­line pe­ri­od of 2002-2005 when the re­gion re­ceived less than US$300 mil­lion.