Global Aid for Trade Review: EU maintains its leading position
EU Development Commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, attends today the World Trade Organisation's Fourth Global Review of Aid for Trade: “Connecting to value chains” in Geneva. The meeting will be a key opportunity for donors and developing countries to come together to look at how Aid for Trade (AfT) is helping people across the world to trade and what has been achieved so far.
The EU collectively with its Member States is the world's largest provider of Aid for Trade.
This year's joint report ‘Aid for Trade at a Glance: Connecting to Value Chains’ (from the World Trade Organisation, or WTO, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD) confirms the importance of AfT in improving trade. In fact, this report provides evidence that Aid for trade indeed increases trade performance and calculates that every dollar invested in AfT produces between 8 and 20 USD in additional exports from developing countries.
The EU is also a strong proponent of trade facilitation, within the wider AfT initiative. In 2011, the share of EU and member in the global Trade Facilitation accounted for 59%, being the biggest providers of trade facilitation since 2008. The impact of trade facilitation can be very visible and tangible; it can lower transport costs, shorter queues at the borders, simplified controls and formalities, increase trade opportunities and create new market openings.
Read the full text here: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-649_en.htm?locale=en
