Secretary-General Supachai,
Executive Director Francis,
Ambassador Pierce,

Today is a day of ‘lasts’.

It is the final JAG for Patricia Francis who has been the Executive Director of the ITC for seven years.

It is also my final JAG as Director-General of the WTO as it is for UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai.

I wish to, at the outset, pay tribute to Patricia and her staff for the manner in which she has guided the ITC over this period. Patricia has showed tremendous grace under pressure and great passion in how she has approached the ITC’s mandate (and indeed mantra) of ‘export impact for good’. The ITC continues to be seen by policy makers and policy users around the globe as an implementer of real world policies and as an organization that has its fingers on the pulse of the needs and priorities of the private sector.

In a world where development resources are becoming scarcer but where development needs are becoming greater, an organization which seeks to minimize costs but maximise impact is an important link in the development chain.

Guiding an organization through a period of economic crisis is not an easy task. I know this first hand. It takes determined stewardship and sometimes the courage to make and take what may appear to be unpopular decisions at the time. I am sensitive to that but am confident that some of the important changes that Patricia has made to the work of the ITC will deliver dividends in the future.

One of the most important areas of success has been in the area of fundraising. Patricia and her team placed a great deal of emphasis on developing an effective fundraising platform and raising the profile of the organization and I believe this has been successful.

The implementation of an agency wide results based management (RBM) system refocuses the delivery of ITC products on impacts and results in a manner that builds on an effective monitoring and evaluation construct. I have consistently highlighted the importance of showing outcomes and impacts and feeding project and programme analysis back into the project cycle to ensure more results focused interventions. RMB must continue to be anchored in the work of the ITC. And I would like to acknowledge the work that Jean-Marie Paugam has undertaken to ensure a strong results based management as an integral part of the ITC’s activities.

Over the past seven years, the ITC has become a partner to the WTO on a number of issues. I would like to highlight a number of these, beginning with Aid for Trade.

The ITC has taken the Aid for Trade concept and completely embraced and incorporated it into its institutional structure, delivery of services and mission statement. Aid for Trade is about providing the tools — financial and capacity related — to developing countries, specifically to least-developed countries, to allow them to take advantage of market access openings and thus place trade-led growth as a central pillar of national and regional development strategies. The impact of effective Aid for Trade is both tangible — such as increased exports and diversification — and intangible — such as better capacity to identify trade-related opportunities and improve dialogue with the private sector. I would be confident in ascribing success to the ITC in both of these areas and the organization can safely stand behind its slogan that the ITC is ‘100% Aid for Trade’.

At the Third Global Review of Aid for Trade in 2011, the ITC submitted and facilitated the submission of over 20 case stories — many with a specific focus on gender issues. For the Fourth Global Review, which will be held 8-10 July this year, the ITC has been an important partner in the monitoring exercise that the WTO has undertaken of the private sector. With the focus of the Global Review on value chains, it was necessary that the private sector be intimately involved in the process. As of today, we have received over 700 private sector responses which will shed further light on how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries can enter, benefit from and move up regional and global value chains. In addition, the ITC will be jointly hosting a series of side events at the Global Review, including an “ITC Ethical Fashion Panel — followed by an ethical fashion event”.

The ITC’s role in the Aid for Trade agenda will only take on greater importance in the future. As official development assistance (ODA) falls and budgets in traditional development partners continue to feel the impact of the crisis, there will need to be a greater focus on three additional sources of funding: South-South trade-related capacity building; domestic resource mobilization; and private sector investment. The ITC is well placed to leverage public money and ODA with foreign direct investment (FDI) and private investment. Its existing links with SMEs and with large companies on the ground makes it an automatic partner in linking and leveraging investments from non-traditional sources.

The engagement of the ITC with countries in accession and in their immediate post accession phase also continues to be an important policy input. An accession to the WTO is a commitment for governments for the benefit of the private sector, in particular the SMEs which make up the economic tissue of many developing countries.

Two weeks ago, I officially presented the report by the Panel on Defining the Future of Trade.  The main message of the report was one of convergence: convergence of the trade regimes of WTO members; convergence of the non-multilateral regimes with the multilateral trading system; convergence between trade and other public policies; and convergence of trade and other domestic policies. This report provides a series of important markers for trade policy to be successful in a 21st century world; where innovations in technology and transportation constantly transform the ways we think of and ‘do trade’, we all have to be ahead of the curve. And it is here that the ITC can shine: because of its proximity to the ground in countries, it can anticipate and incorporate new trends and priorities into its work stream.  

One of these trends is the increasing prevalence and impact of non-tariff measures (NTMs) on trade. The ITC’s work on NTMs, including through its business surveys, has helped to expand the knowledge of existing regulatory barriers that SMEs have to face and hence started a debate on the importance of building the capacity of the private sector in developing countries to address and meet these standards — the large majority of which are private standards.

The ITC’s work on services (specifically in the area of tourism), on gender and trade, on value chain analysis and on the green economy are areas where the organization remains ahead of the curve and certainly ahead of the multilateral trade rule book.

Here I must make specific mention of the work on value chains, which offer an opportunity for developing countries and the SMEs within their borders. While many of them may not have the scale or productive capacity to export directly a wide variety of finished products, they can certainly feed into the supply chains of larger companies domestically while concurrently building up their competence and know-how by improving production techniques, incorporating new technologies, increasing value in their products, and improving the ability to address regulatory barriers. This must continue to be a centrepiece of the ITC’s work in the future. 

I also welcome and support the ITC’s pragmatic approach to innovation in trade-related technical assistance — such as the re-launch of the Trade in Services programme. Trade in services is an important area, with services making up more than 50 per cent of global GDP and 50 per cent of exports when measured in value-added terms. For a vast majority of the ITC clientele — specifically for small island developing states and small, vulnerable economies — services is the tool for enhanced growth and employment generation.

The efforts in expanding South-South trade and assisting LDCs, landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), small island developing states and sub-Saharan Africa to diversify their exports towards emerging markets must also form a central pillar of the ITC’s work. Just 20 years ago, South-South represented barely 10 per cent of world trade. By 2020, a third of global trade is likely to be South-South. Here, the ITC has an important role to play in helping SMEs come to grips with the expectations of trading with South-South partners, including through identifying and breaking down barriers that may still restrict trade amongst and between these countries. A specific focus on regional integration and overcoming barriers to intra-regional trade, especially in Africa, must also form part of a forward-looking strategy.

In some respects, the element that ties these areas together — increased trade and growth through removal of barriers to trade — is trade facilitation. This is one of the deliverables for the Bali Ministerial (along with some elements of agriculture, development and LDC issues). Providing capacity to companies to produce more efficiently and competitively will have little impact unless the appropriate processes are in place at the border to make importing and exporting quicker and less costly. This is what a multilateral Trade Facilitation Agreement aims to do. Effective trade facilitation is a sine non qua for investment — both domestic and foreign resource mobilization — and it is one of the elements included in the policy decisions of investors.

In conclusion, I once again thank Patricia for her leadership of the ITC and for laying the groundwork for her successor. And we should know who that successor is by June. The ITC must continue to find the right mix of both expanding its delivery of products based on the priorities of its clients but also concentrating its interventions to ensure maximum impact. It must continue its fundraising pillar while also better harnessing and leveraging trade-related assistance from the private sector. In essence, the ITC going forward must continue what it is already doing — and do it even better!

Thank you