Guatemala

<p>This project aims to enhance trade and investment between Europe and Guatemala, leveraging the Association Agreement with Central America. It forms part of the Global Gateway Investment Agenda (GGIA) for Guatemala. The project focuses on digitalizing the Ministry of Economy&apos;s services to facilitate trade and investment and includes a sectoral component to boost the competitiveness of the pharmaceutical and clothing industries through digitalization, sustainability, inclusiveness, and investment.</p>

<p>This project will enhance ITC offerings of global public goods &nbsp; by advancing the development of additional functionalities within the Deforestation-Free Trade Gateway (DFTG) whose development has recently started in March 2024 under the ITC project C374. The DFTG aims to mitigate the potential impact of the new European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) on trade flows between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and the European Union, particularly for economic operators involved in the production and trade of the commodities covered by the Regulation.</p><p>The project will enhance and simplify the utilization of the Producers registry by introducing an invitation mechanism. This mechanism will enable EU operators and exporters to collect and compile the farm-level information from their suppliers through the DFTG, facilitating the substantiation of their Due Diligence (DD) statements. Furthermore, EU operators and LAC exporters will be able to issue a DD self-statement document with the information they gathered through the invitation mechanism.</p><p>The new functionalities under development will undergo testing within the same value chain and pilot countries as the Producers&apos; registry.&nbsp;</p>

<p>This project will enhance ITC offerings of global public goods through the development of a tool, the Deforestation-Free Trade Gateway (DFTG), aimed to mitigate the potential impact of the new European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) on trade flows between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and the European Union, particularly for economic operators involved in the production and trade of the commodities covered by the Regulation.&nbsp;</p><p>The project will develop a functionality, the Deforestation-Free-Trade Producer Registry, for value chain operators in both European and Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries to gather evidence that the products they trade do not originate from deforested or forest degraded areas. Thus, &nbsp;the Deforestation-Free Producer Registry will gather the farm-level information that the EU operators need for issuing their Due Diligence Statement.</p>

<p><br></p><p dir="ltr"><strong>SheTrades Latin America is an initiative of ITC - SheTrades Global, implemented by ITC - ecomConnect. With the objective of empowering and training 1,000 women-led companies to enable them to sell their products and services online. The programme will run from June 2022 to December 2023.&nbsp;</strong></p><p dir="ltr"><strong>ITC works with strategic partner institutions specialized in e-commerce in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama and Uruguay, to develop tools and events in Spanish. The project aims to guide and assess a total of 1,000 beneficiary companies in their e-commerce journey on the virtual learning platform developed by the project.</strong></p><p dir="ltr"><strong>SheTrades LatAm will contribute to SDG 5 and the ITC target of &quot;Connecting 3 Million Women to Markets.&quot;&nbsp;</strong></p><p><br></p><p>SheTrades Latin America es una iniciativa piloto de SheTrades Global, implementada por ecomConnect. Su objetivo es aumentar la digitalizaci&oacute;n de 1,000 empresas latinoamericanas lideradas por mujeres para vender en l&iacute;nea. El proyecto se comenz&oacute; en junio, 2022, y se llevar&aacute; a cabo hasta diciembre de 2023.</p><p>El ITC trabaja con las instituciones t&eacute;cnicas especializadas en comercio digital en Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panam&aacute; y Uruguay para desarrollar y probar las herramientas y eventos en espa&ntilde;ol. El proyecto aspira a capacitar a un total de 1.000 empresas beneficiarias en su ruta para vender en l&iacute;nea utilizando la plataforma de aprendizaje virtual desarrollada en el marco del proyecto.&nbsp;</p><p>SheTrades LatAm contribuir&aacute; al ODS 5 y al objetivo del ITC de &ldquo;Conectar a 3 millones de mujeres con el mercado&rdquo;.</p>

<p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Within the framework of the border modernization process in Central America, this project seeks to generate economic opportunities and promote productive and decent work mainly for informal and unemployed workers and people involved in menial economic activities located at the Guatemalan border in Ciudad Pedro de Alvarado.&nbsp;</span></p><p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size: 14px;">In the pilot phase, the project will seek to address institutional weaknesses and deficiencies hindering informal entrepreneurs advancement in education and in the labor market through skills development, access to micro-finance and employment promotion.&nbsp;</span></p><p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size: 14px;">In the second phase, the project will seek to develop profitable businesses with groups of beneficiaries who acquired relevant skills in sectors with potential for domestic and export sales. In parallel, the project will continue to enhance Ciudad Pedro de Alvarado&rsquo;s position to attract investments building on the new brand developed during the pilot phase.</span></p><p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Doing so, the project is expected to i) enable informal entrepreneurs to reduce their level of dependency on income derived from border activities and their presence in the primary border areas devoted to border control and inspection functions and to ii) reduce the propensity of border communities to migrate thanks to the new economic opportunities in border areas.</span></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>