Vanuatu delegation visits ITC

HE Mr Roy Mickey Joy, Ambassador of Vanuatu to the European Union and the Kingdom of Belgium, on 22 January met a team of senior International Trade Centre (ITC) representatives, led by Deputy Executive Director Mr Jean-Marie Paugam, at ITC’s Geneva headquarters.

Mr Paugam welcomed Ambassador Joy and extended ITC congratulations to Vanuatu for last year successfully becoming the 157th member of the World Trade Organization. He also emphasized that Vanuatu is very important to ITC’s work in the Pacific region – both in the pre-accession period and now as a fully-fledged member of the WTO.

Mr Joy, was his country’s chief negotiator in the WTO accession talks, said that he and his country were very pleased with ITC facilitation for participation at regional accession-related events, and opportunities for peer-learning, given to Vanuatu in the pre-accession period and added that he was looking forward to work even closer with ITC on post-accession programming relating to a public-private dialogue, as well as institutional and enterprise-level capacity building.

Mr Joy said that he was particularly impressed with the work ITC had done to empower women to participate in trade, both in the Pacific region as elsewhere, and sought continued assistance in this domain.

The two sides agreed that they would continue to explore the scope to enhance ITC’s partnership with Vanuatu in relation to its WTO membership commitments’, and continue work to involve the country’s public and private sectors in the process.