Global Aid For Trade May Hit $25bn By 2010

from Leadership Nigeria

Total aid for trade disbursements from individual donors, international organisations and regional development banks which hit $15.4 billion in 2004 may increase to $25 billion by 2010, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has said.

According to the latest edition of 'developments', an international magazine that focuses on the development of Africa, the director general of WTO, Pascal Lamy, said that "together with our partner countries and other institutions, we aim to raise this figure to $25 billion in 2010".

Lamy further said, "we are establishing enhanced monitoring and evaluation mechanisms so that countries pledging funds for trade capacity are held to account".


According to the WTO boss, "We know, that openness can unlock wealth creation which, when distributed equitably through sound domestic policies, can be a powerful tool for poverty alleviation".

Stating that in the last 15 years China, India, Brazil and Vietnam - to name only a few - lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, the WTO boss further said, "we've seen the extra-ordinarily rapid rise of these countries, and others, into important actors in the global economy, thereby changing the geopolitical landscape in ways we could never have imagined even two decades ago.

"We also know that in many respects, development activists were right when they said that the trading system did not adequately address the concerns of developing countries. A trading system which permitted rich countries to distort trade in agriculture through subsidies and high tariffs levied in rich countries were against precisely the sort of products in which the poorest countries were most competitive, was far from fair".

Humbly, the WTO boss agrees with the criticism against the body as the guardian of a system which permits trade distortions. "Yet, increasingly, development ministries and activists have come to see that WTO not only provides developing countries a voice, but hands them a tool for changing the rules of international trade to better meet their needs", he argues.