Regional Review Meeting on Aid-for-Trade

Statement by Abdoulie Janneh
UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ECA

Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
1 October 2007

Your Excellency, Mr. Jakaya Kikwete, President of the United Republic of Tanzania

Mr. Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank

Mr. Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization

Mrs. Elizabeth Tankeu, African Union Commissioner for Trade and Industry

Ms. Obiageli Ezekwesili, Vice-President (Africa Region) of the World Bank

Honourable Ministers

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen

I am delighted to be here in Dar-es-Salaam for this Regional Review meeting on Aid for Trade. It is particularly fitting that this meeting is taking place in Tanzania, which has a strong record of active involvement in efforts to promote African cooperation and development. I therefore wish to thank the Government and people of Tanzania for their generous hospitality and the excellent facilities that have been placed at our disposal.

Let me pay particular tribute to the dynamic leadership of President Jakaya Kikwete, whose example of commitment to development and social justice continues to inspire us all. I am also very glad that the African Union, which embodies our collective aspiration for a strong, united and economically diversified continent is adequately represented here.

ECA is pleased to be working closely with the World Trade Organization and African Development Bank to promote the aid for trade initiative in Africa, starting with the joint organization of this African Regional Review meeting. In this regard, I wish to salute the commitment of my good friends, President Donald Kaberuka of the African Development Bank and Mr. Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the WTO to promoting the noble and exciting aims of aid for trade. We equally welcome the presence in our midst of the dynamic new Vice President for Africa of the World Bank, Ms. Oby Ezekwesili. The presence of a broad range of senior policy makers from across the continent and from its development partners is visible evidence of the emphasis that we all place on overcoming the constraints and expanding the possibilities that trade presents for meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

This gathering avails us with a unique opportunity for dialogue on how aid for trade can help Africa to use trade as an engine for development. There is abundant evidence especially from Asia that trade can promote growth and development and help lift countries out of poverty. By enabling better use of trading opportunities and facilitating trade flows, aid for trade has great potential for accelerating growth in Africa, which is not yet taking full advantage of unilateral and negotiated trade liberalization. We would therefore need to carefully consider areas in which intervention will yield the best results and how to ensure that adequate finance for achieving desired objectives. At the same time, there has to be coherence in objectives and across sectors with clear priority given to using aid for trade to promote the desired goal of regional integration in Africa.

There is, for instance, a wide range of trade related challenges facing this continent including the integration of trade into national development strategies and an improved ability to negotiate and implement trade outcomes. At the same time, more roads, electricity grids, telecommunications, ports, irrigation and laboratory testing facilities are required to underpin production and exchange. Aid for trade should also help to create a good business environment and to help countries to meet adjustment costs of trade liberalization. The challenge therefore is to see how best aid for trade can be mobilized to meet all these diverse needs.

In this regard, it is worth re-stating that aid for trade should not stand-alone but complement national and regional efforts. It should be used to fill the gap between available domestic resources and needs in the trade sector especially as there are equally pressing claims on the limited finances developing countries for the provision of social services. Moreover, aid for trade should not entail mere re-allocation of existing support but should bring additional resources to scale up investments necessary for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Indeed, if aid for trade is to be effective, it should be a catalyst in financing for development and not become a palliative measure to substitute for a development outcome in the Doha Round.

Coherence between multiple donors and the various sectors is also vital in ensuring the effectiveness of aid for trade. All stakeholders have an important role to play in ensuring that trade capacity building mechanisms work more effectively by sharpening objectives and avoiding duplication, overlap and conflicting priorities. In seeking the benefits of a framework to better manage and scale-up the volume and impact of aid in support of trade, we should not, however, focus exclusively on process and overlook the development outcomes that we all seek to achieve. Similar care should also be taken not to concentrate trade capacity building efforts on perceived soft issues. We should keep in mind the inter-relatedness between policy objectives, infrastructure, institutional requirements and adjustment costs and aim to strike the right balance in providing resources to meet different needs in each of these sectors.

Aid for trade can also be used to overcome the limitations of Africa's small, fragmented economies and thereby help the process of regional integration. Since increased trade is a means of deepening regional integration, aid for trade can help the process through the provision of regional infrastructure and trade facilitation measures that will ease existing constraints on intra-Africa trade. This is why we believe in ECA that aid for trade should be consistent with and supportive of regional and sub-regional integration efforts if it is to be effective.

This meeting is an indispensable opportunity for key decision-makers to share their views on operationalizing aid for trade. In doing so, we should be bold and ambitious in coming up with viable solutions. However, we should not see aid for trade as an isolated response to the trading challenges of African countries but rather as part and parcel of the on-going effort to build a global partnership for development. The outcome of our deliberations here should therefore enable a persuasive and compelling African presentation to the global review taking place next month.

ECA remains very strongly committed to the success of aid for trade. The Commission has developed credible capacity in the area of trade, especially through its African Trade Policy Centre, and is poised to scale-up its support to member States. We shall therefore continue to work closely with our partners in the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank, the World Trade Organization and international development community to help African countries and Regional Economic Communities define their national and regional aid for trade frameworks. Working together, we shall surely succeed in using aid for trade to stimulate growth and development in Africa.

I thank you for your kind attention and look forward to an exciting and engaging exchange of views.