As the 100% Aid for Trade agency, ITC brings the private sector voice to trade development. It partners with the private sector to ensure that Aid for Trade leads small and medium enterprises to global markets. Within this framework, ITC facilitates the three important roles of the private sector: advocates; partners; and beneficiaries.
‘Private sector engagement is critical to results in Aid for Trade,’ said ITC Executive Director Patricia Francis as she moderated an ITC-hosted luncheon titled Empowering Women, Powering Trade: Integrating women into global value chains. She spoke about how ITC worked with the WTO to see how gender could be mainstreamed in Aid for Trade, saying, ‘This time, the Global Review has a solid focus on gender.’
Mrs. Francis also participated in the Third Global Review as a panellist in Session 5: Accessing Global Private Sector Value Chains, and in the side event titled The Role of Voluntary Standards in Global Value Chains. Highlighting one of ITC’s Third Global Review case stories, Ethiopian Coffee Quality Improvement Project., Mrs. Francis said ‘We have to have an understanding of the perspective of the private sector. You also have to have the commitment of the institutions you’re going to work with. We can’t emphasize enough: ownership, ownership, ownership.’
ITC joined with partners the African Development Bank (AfDB), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the World Bank to host a press conference announcing an initiative to make comprehensive trade data available for no charge. The initiative, Transparency in Trade, a joint project aiming to eliminate the transparency gap resulting from the lack of access to data on country-specific trade policies.
ITC prepared six case stories for the Third Global Review of Aid for Trade: African Cotton Development Initiative; Ethiopian Coffee Quality Improvement Project; The Ethical Fashion Programme - Not Charity, Just Work; Aid for Trade and Export Performance: A business perspective, Uganda; Modular Learning System – Supply Chain Management; Market Analysis Tools and Capacity Building for LDCs and Developing Countries. These case stories and ITC’s videos demonstrating Aid for Trade projects can be on the Aid for Trade section of our site.