US renews contribution for food, animal and plant health standards

The donation is for the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF), a programme set up for the purpose jointly by the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the World Organization for Animal Health, and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The funds will be used to implement the new Medium Term Strategy of the STDF. This Strategy puts much greater emphasis on the STDF acting as a vehicle for the co-ordination of SPS-related technical assistance and the identification of related good practice. As part of this function, the STDF is liaising closely with existing US initiatives in the SPS area, such as the West African Trade Hub to ensure synergies and avoid duplication of effort.

The new Medium Term Strategy will run until 2011 and aims at achieving a facility with annual operating funds of $5 million. Since its inception in 2002, the STDF has built a portfolio of 24 projects and is financing a further 22 project-preparation grants.

Project-preparation grants aim to turn good ideas into projects and are a key way of ensuring the target is met for 40% of STDF resources to be spent on least-developed countries.

The new Medium Term Strategy places emphasis on the use of project-preparation grants to leverage resources in the SPS area from existing programmes of the US and other donors-always with an eye on the development of synergies and avoidance of duplication.