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Aid for Trade

The UK has been at the forefront in promoting the need to increase support for trade integration, since 2005, aiming to influence the international community to provide a step change in trade support.

Global Aid for Trade Review
Gareth Thomas, Permanent Under Secretary of State for Trade, Development and Consumer Affairs, attended the first Global Review meeting on Aid for Trade at the General Council of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva on 21 and 22 November 2007. Never before have all 154 WTO members, including major multilateral institutions, come together to focus on how, collectively, we can help improve countries' capacity to trade. This is a major achievement that we fully support.

The meeting, hosted by Pascal Lamy, WTO Director-General and attended by:
Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank; Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF); Kemal Dervis from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); the Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the heads of regional banks.

What was achieved at the Meeting?
The meeting underlined the importance of translating commitments into implementation plans. The review was a historical first, bringing together the international trade, development and financial communities to focus on integrating the most marginalised countries into global trading to ensure that poor people capture the benefits of increased trade.

Pascal Lamy said, following the review:
"I think we've succeeded, which is a very first step, in establishing Aid for Trade as a priority in the trade community, in the development community, in the finance community, in the planning community,...connecting together trade people, finance people, development people, planning people...establishing the necessary connection and the necessary trust between these actors, and after all, connection and trust is something that takes us back to our core business in the WTO."

UK Pledges
The UK supported its international agenda on Aid for Trade with two specific “Aid for Trade” commitments.

The first commitment announced by Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, in November 2005, pledged the UK to increase Aid for Trade to £100 million per annum by 2010. This covers bilateral DFID spending only, against a narrow definition of Aid for Trade, including: trade policy work, contributions to the Enhanced Integrated Framework and private sector development.

The second commitment, announced by Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer in September 2006, pledged to increase our total support for Aid for Trade including support for trade-related infrastructure by 50% by 2010 to $750 million a year. This covers bilateral and multilateral DFID spending against a broad definition of Aid for Trade, to include infrastructure such as roads, ports, power and telecommunications. The UK fully expects to meet these commitments.