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Global Advocacy
The global advocacy category covers services that are designed to promote the use of trade as a development tool and to encourage support for developing countries’ efforts to improve their trade capacity building. This includes analysis and dissemination of trade-related information, promoting understanding of the relationship between trade and development, and supporting policies. Some agencies provide information on and support for the interactions between their more specialized interests and trade.
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Support to the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECPDM)
Legal and Regulatory Framework
Assistance under this category includes helping countries to bring their own regulations into conformity with international rules, more general help to improve their legal institutions, and training officials to deal with such rules. A number of the agencies specialise in particular areas, rather than trying to provide expertise on the legal rules in all sectors. For several, the aim is to balance trade-related obligations with other national (or international) interests.
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Support to Advisory Centre for WTO Law (ACWL)
Supply Capacity
In line with the trade focus of this Guide, support activities to develop supply capacity are considered to be those that aim to increase the availability of goods and services for export. There is no easy distinction between this and building more general capacity to produce, and this distinction is becoming less pertinent as borders open and competition in local markets from imports increases. Some agencies do not make this distinction in their projects.
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Compliance support infrastructure and services
Assistance in this category is closely related to that under the Legal and Regulatory Framework, but places more emphasis on building the institutions in developing countries to implement such legal frameworks, and less on the details of compliance. It is an area where the specialised agencies again have the main role
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Support for UNIDO’s trade capacity-building programs
Trade Policy Development
Agencies’ assistance to trade policy development is generally provided in four areas: design and implementation of trade policy; specific developing country issues in trade (such as commodity exports and preferences); support in trade negotiations; and assistance in managing the interactions between trade and other policies.
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Support to UNIDO for the implementation of activities under the Trade Capacity-Building Programme
Support to International Trade Centre’s technical assistance
Support to WTO technical assistance
Trade promotion capacity building
This category includes both direct support to exporters and the building of institutions in-country which will provide such support. It is different from many of the other categories in its direct relationship to the private sector.
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Support to projects in various countries funded from Local cooperation funds
Support to ITC’s programmes that support national trade promotion agencies
Market and Trade Information
Market information and trade information services are different in their focus and methods. Market information is about sub-sectors and products, while trade information focuses on the aggregate level, including data on trade flows, policies affecting trade, and trends in these. Market information is usually targeted at traders. Trade information is, broadly speaking, intended to be used by policy-makers.
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Trade Facilitation
This category covers the development, harmonization, and implementation of the rules and procedures which govern how goods cross borders.
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Support to ITC’s work on trade facilitation
Support to WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement Facility
Support to TradeMark East Africa.
E-commerce Services & Digital Economy
This category includes capacity building activities directed to development of e-commerce from the perspective of the physical and regulatory factors, for example reducing barriers to trade across distance via electronic marketplaces, development of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure, and regulatory frameworks.
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Physical Trade Infrastructure
Like Supply Capacity, this is a category where the boundary between trade support and more general support to production or development is not clearly defined. Some agencies try to allocate spending on individual projects partially to trade and partially to other purposes; others focus on the principal purpose of a project or a type of activity.
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Trade-Related Financial Services
Trade finance is one of the areas where exporters from developing countries are most disadvantaged compared to those from developed countries because selling at a distance to purchasers who are not directly known within the country requires special skills and risk assessment from banks. Only when exports reach a sufficiently high level is it profitable for banks in a country to acquire these skills, so exporters, particularly SMEs, are hampered by difficulty in accessing export finance. Therefore both the cost and the availability of appropriate finance are problems. Some agencies offer support to build national capacity, while others try to fill the gap until such capacity is available.
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Support to International Trade Centre’s (ITC) program on Trade Finance
