This report was prepared by the Integration and Trade Sector (INT) as a contribution to the regional meeting on Mobilizing Aid for Trade: Latin America and the Caribbean, organized jointly by the IDB and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in collaboration with the World Bank, and hosted by the Government of Peru in Lima on September 13-14, 2007. The meeting is the first of three regional meetings organized by the WTO to prepare for its November 2007 General Council meeting on aid for trade.

Aid for Trade (AfT) has become a major item on the international trade and development discourse. This is to a large extent in response to concerns expressed by developing countries and economies in transition with regard to their capacities to implement trade agreements, especially WTO agreements, and undertake necessary adjustments to increase net development gains from emerging trade opportunities. In this World Report, major UN agencies active in development cooperation and longstanding providers of trade-related technical assistance and capacity building discuss ways to sustain the momentum towards the operationalization and implementation of the AfT initiative and the supportive role to be played by the UN system. This is consistent with UN's role in promoting development and helping to achieve poverty reduction, as committed in the Millennium Declaration and the 2005 World Summit Outcome. The Report should be of particular interest to government officials, officials of regional organizations, representatives of the private sector dealing with trade agreements and negotiations, civil society and academia. Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD Lakshmi Puri is Acting Deputy Secretary-General and Director of the Division on International Trade and Services, and Commodities at UNCTAD in Geneva. Philippe De Lombaerde is Associate Director of United Nations University (UNU-CRIS) in Bruges. In collaboration with: UNCTAD, ECA, ECLAC, ESCAP, ESCWA, UNECE, UNIDO, UNDP, UNEP

The Aid for Trade Initiative needs to be revamped. This article describes the challenges the Initiative faces and describes the pros and cons of possible reforms. The Aid for Trade Initiative succeeded in mobilizing quickly a large amount of financial resources. However, because the Doha Round talks stalled, the aid mobilized could not support the implementation of a multilateral agreement. Instead, it was spent on various projects, some of them not clearly related to trade. This affected developing countries confidence in the Initiative. To make matters worse, in the midst of a fiscal crisis that threatens development budgets, the Initiative had difficulties showing convincing results. In order to preserve resource mobilization, the WTO is expanding the scope of the Initiative to new areas only remotely related to trade and the trade and development nexus. This is unlikely to build confidence. The WTO should rather narrow the scope of the Initiative in order to make it more focused and efficient.

This edition analyses how trade can contribute to economic diversification and empowerment, with a focus on eliminating extreme poverty, particularly through the effective participation of women and youth. It shows how aid for trade can contribute to that objective by addressing supply-side capacity and trade-related infrastructure constraints, including for micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises notably in rural areas.

This edition focuses on trade connectivity, which is critical for inclusiveness and sustainable development. Physical connectivity enables the movement of goods and services to local, regional and global markets.

Assessing Aid determines that the effectiveness of aid is not decided by the amount received but rather the institutional and policy environment into which it is accepted. It examines how development assistance can be more effective at reducing global poverty and gives five mainrecommendations for making aid more effective: targeting financial aid to poor countries with good policies and strong economic management; providing policy-based aid to demonstrated reformers; using simpler instruments to transfer resources to countries with sound management; focusing projects oncreating and transmitting knowledge and capacity; and rethinking the internal incentives of aid agencies.

The Aid for Trade Initiative has allowed for the active engagement of a large number of organisations and agencies in helping developing countries and especially the least developed build the infrastructure and supply-side capacity they need to connect to regional and global markets and improve ...