WTO Chairs Annual Conference

This year’s Annual Conference marks a transition as the WCP program is nearing its end. The Conference will take place over two days, with the first day having a strong focus on research outputs and the second day specifically addressing the achievements of the programme and reflections on the way forward.

The first conference day will be dedicated to presentations by WCP Chairs on the results of individual research papers addressing the theme “Overcoming Supply Side Constraints: Issues for Policy Makers”. This research segment will be open to Geneva based policy makers and academics in order to enhance visibility of the WTO Chairs Programme. The event may also attract participants of the Aid for Trade Review, which takes place at the WTO on July 8-10. Indeed, the theme "overcoming supply side constraints" is likely to complement well the discussions at the Aid for Trade Global review. 

The objectives pursued on the second day of the conference are twofold: to assess its achievements (with a focus on 2012) and to discuss the future of the programme. These reflections will be conducted by WTO Chairs, the Advisory Board Members, WCP Counterparts and the WCP team.

The first three sessions of the second day will be structured around the three pillars of the WCP programme: curriculum development-teaching, research and outreach. The output generated by the Chairs will be presented for each of these three pillars. The relevant presentations will be prepared by the WCP team of the WTO Secretariat, in close co-ordination and collaboration with the WCP Chairs in the run-up to the event. Members of the Advisory Board and WCP counterparts will be invited to contribute to the discussion on the generated outputs. It is expected that this approach will be conducive to providing a comprehensive and structured overview of the achievements of the WCP program in the past year and that the resulting discussions will provide useful guidance for future work.

An active and constructive participation of moderators, discussants, Chairs and participants would set the stage for the final session of the second day, providing further guidance on the future of the WCP program. A discussion paper will be prepared by the Secretariat for this purpose.

  

Programme 

Room W, 154 rue de Lausanne, WTO

Overcoming Supply Side Constraints: Issues for Policy Makers

While trade opening is indispensable to development and inclusive growth, it is not necessarily sufficient per se. Supply side constraints may make it difficult for low-income countries, in particular least developed countries to reap the full benefits from trading opportunities.

Technical and hard infrastructure capacities, human resources, a weak enabling environment for enterprises, as well as transition costs are among the most frequently cited supply side constraints low-income countries face. They make it difficult for companies to expand exports in existing product lines, to move into new production or export lines or to allow exporters to stabilize their export position and survive once they have managed to enter new markets. Yet the process of diversifying exports is one that appears to be inherent to the process of expanding trade as statistical evidence has shown that diversification of exports and levels of exports tend to move together at least in early stages of development.

While there is ample empirical evidence identifying relevant supply side constraints much less is known about the design of policies to overcome these constraints. The objective of this segment is to provide insights gained from research by WCP Chairs on the design of policies targeting trade-related supply side constraints, including those that have been conducted in the context of the Aid for Trade initiative.

 

Thursday 11 July 2013

 

Friday 12 July 2013

Room W, 154 rue de Lausanne, WTO  

WTO Chairs Programme: Review of Activities and Learning from the Past

Taking into account the ending of the four years of the WCP in December 2013, it is time to take stock of the achievements of the programme, to agree on the best way forward for the final months and to discuss lessons learned from nearly four years of collaboration. In this segment, outputs of the year 2012 will be presented and discussed in separate sessions on each pillar of WCP activities: research, curriculum development and teaching, outreach.

The insights gained from these presentations will contribute to a discussion about the aspects of the WCP that may need to be reconsidered with regard to relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of the WCP.  The original reporting templates, for instance, were not designed in the context of a results-based management (RBM) approach.  In 2012, new reporting formats based on the logical framework approach were introduced in line with the new requirements that ITTC activities have to meet. The experience learnt from last year’s programme and from the progressive implementation of the RBM approach will represent a useful input into the discussions during the final session of this segment of the Annual Conference, i.e. the session during which the future of the WCP program will be discussed.