EU moots more funds for WTO’s Global Trust Fund

Rajeev Jayaswal

New Delhi, Dec 19: The European Union (EU) has recommended an increase in fund allocation to the World Trade Organisation’s Global Trust Fund, created for providing trade-related technical assistance to developing nations, from Euro 10 million to Euro 15 million. This was conveyed by EU at WTO general council meeting held on Wednesday in Geneva.

This would allow WTO to step up its technical assistance support to developing countries, it said quoting EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy, “we took a very important step in launching a development agenda in Doha. Now we need to pull out all the stops to help countries take part effectively in negotiations and to make best use of the Doha outcome. EU will be making a substantial contribution to the new trust fund, in line with our contributions to existing WTO trust funds over the last six years.”

The WTO committee on budget, finance and administration has discussed the 2002 budget for WTO secretariat operations and its recommendation to the council meeting on Monday is that a Doha Development Agenda Global Trust Fund be set up, the source said.
The aim of this fund is to finance technical assistance to developing countries and economies in transition and especially least-developed countries (LDCs), as a follow-up to the Doha ministerial declaration, it added.

In view of the increased need for technical assistance at short notice, notably for the LDCs, EC wants a bigger fund to be made available now, in the first year after the Doha Declaration, it said.
The Commission has argued that raising the target amount by 50 per cent will allow the WTO secretariat to provide substantial technical assistance to those countries that want to improve their capacity to negotiate the Doha Work Programme. These negotiations will start in the spring of 2002, and EC takes the view that all WTO members should be able to participate in such negotiations.

The WTO secretariat has been providing technical assistance since its creation. It has recently created a Technical Cooperation Division and the WTO Training Institute to deal with the increased demand for technical assistance from its members.

EU is fully committed to provide assistance for capacity building in the longer term, over and above the proposed increased technical assistance to enhance developing countries’ capacity to negotiate, according to an EC source.