World Trade Promotion Organizations Conference and Awards
ITC’s biennial flagship event centres on macro-economic trends and their effects on business and trade promotion organizations. The awards recognize outstanding Trade Promotion Organizations who have led on success, innovation, and the sharing of excellence.
Join over 300 senior trade representatives of national trade promotion organizations at this unique network.
Trade promotion leaders to meet ahead of Global SME Ministerial
Leaders of trade promotion organizations (TPOs) from around the world will meet on 22 July 2025, on the eve of the inaugural Global SME Ministerial Meeting.
The TPO Leadership Dialogue will celebrate good practice, inspire new models of operation, and strengthen the links with ministries for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Peer to peer discussions will be at the core of the meeting, backed up by research, data and case studies. The WTPO award winners from 2024 will be recognized and celebrated. Download the programme here.
Join over 150 senior trade representatives of national Trade Promotion Organizations at this unique event.
The WTPO Conference did not take place in 2024, as ITC was reshaping its public events programme to better support small businesses and trade. However, the WTPO Awards 2024 continued as planned. Despite the cancellation, ITC reaffirmed its commitment to engaging with the TPO network by fostering collaboration, recognizing excellence, and supporting global trade dialogue.
At the 13th edition of the conference, we explored how bold trade and investment organizations provide solutions to help build resilience and manage risk in times of uncertainty.
With the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a guide, we looked at how businesses can compete and trade, while serving their communities and protecting our planet.
This year the conference was postponed due to pandemic travel restrictions. A virtual awards ceremony was held.
The conference's theme was "using ecosystems to deliver for growth".
The WTPO Awards recognize institutional excellence and celebrate hard work, innovation, and commitment.
Cultivating and maintaining a conducive trade and investment environment for MSMEs is the raison d’être of trade promotion organizations (TPOs). These organizations provide a lifeline by creating, developing, rolling out and scaling up solutions that reinforce resilience.
These awards symbolize ITC’s partnership and commitment to connect TPOs to each other. They serve to reward success and share good practices so all may benefit.
Business France, Switzerland Global Enterprise, and ApexBrasil showed new ways to look at the trade and investment landscape through their approaches to partnerships, technologies, inclusion, and sustainability. Their stories, alongside those of the WTPO Awards runners’ up from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Namibia, are examples of how TPOs are helping bring the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Candidates highlighted the importance of partnerships in designing and delivering services; innovation in the use of information technologies; or a strong contribution to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Learn more about their unique initiatives here.
Trade promotion organizations from Jamaica, Malaysia and Zimbabwe received this year’s top prizes for launching innovative programmes in their countries that help small firms to benefit from trade opportunities.
Read about the winners and about the awards process.
Trade promotion organizations from Costa Rica, Georgia and Sweden received top prizes for launching innovative programmes in their countries that help micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to benefit from trade opportunities.
Organizations from Ghana, Nigeria and Qatar took home top honours for their innovative work.
