The Role of Technical Assistance in World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Facilitation Negotiations

This issue of the Bulletin presents a brief review of trade facilitation negotiations from the specific viewpoint of technical assistance, capacity-building and special and differential treatment (SDT). Trade facilitation negotiations have focused on clarifying three articles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT): article V (freedom of transit); article VIII (fees and formalities connected with importation and exportation); and article X (publication and administration of trade regulations). Although the stage of text-based negotiations has not yet been reached, the process of receiving and analysing proposals has made it possible to identify the aspects most urgently in need of correcting by means of trade facilitation measures. Consideration has been given to several formulas for the implementation of those measures and to how the associated technical assistance should be organized.

Trade Facilitation in Mercosur - the Most Important Regulatory Advances

As mentioned in FAL Bulletin No 167, "trade facilitation" is still a relatively imprecise concept covering a wide variety of topics, such as: customs issues; technical norms relating to quality standars and control of plant and normal diseases; transport; commercial information interchange and a variety of trade-related services.This broad scope means that an analysis of trade facilitation at the level of an individual country or trade agreement, entails obtaining data froma variety of public bodies, since they are not centralized. Studying trade facilitation in Mercosur is quite complex, given its considerable organizational decentralization and the geographic dispersal of the operations of its different bodies.This edition of our Bulletin covers progress achieved on customs issues and on technical standards and quality control.

Trade Facilitation as Part of Creating the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)

The content of this article is the natural continuation of both FAL Bulletin No. 167 and FAL Bulletin No. 171. FAL Bulletin No. 167 advanced conceptually in the definition of the term trade facilitation and a general explanation of how some international bodies and the FTAA process itself deal with this issue. This month's article expands on the information regarding trade facilitation within the FTAA, which brings together the sizeable number of 34 countries from the Western Hemisphere.Similarly, taking into account that FAL Bulletin No. 171 reported on some progress toward trade facilitation regulations within the framework of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the current article takes a complementary approach, reporting on developments favourable to trade facilitation in another agreement for economic integration, which basically proposes the creation of a free trade area.

ECLAC - Mesoamerica Project cooperation: Support for the facilitation of trade and transport in Mesoamerica

This edition of the FAL Bulletin analyses the activities performed by ECLAC and the Mesoamerica Project related to issues linked to infrastructure services, particularly with regards to the physical integration, facilitation and operation of multimodal services in Central America.

Rules of origin and trade facilitation

The contents of this article complement those of the recently published FAL Bulletin No. 201, which referred to the rules of origin included in economic integration agreements signed by members of the Latin American Integration Association (LAIA). On this occasion the relationship between rules of origin and facilitation of international trade in goods is examined. The contents of both this issue and of FAL Bulletin No. 201 have been taken from a more extensive document written by the same author, which is publication No. 28 of the ECLAC Comercio Internacional Series, Normas de origen y procedimientos para su administración en América Latina, of May 2003.

Trade Facilitation: Promoting Trade as an Engine of Growth Using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTS)

Three factors define the main difficulties faced by developing countries in the area of trade facilitation: (i) limited understanding and use by governments and business (especially SMEs) of trade facilitation and of ICT tools and techniques; (ii) developing countries' limited capacity for policy analysis and inadequate policy instruments for the implementation of trade facilitation, and (iii) inadequate policy coordination for negotiation on trade facilitation. These obstacles tend to reduce countries' development opportunities and to increase the costs of general economic development and social welfare.The United Nations, through its five regional commissions, is launching a project that seeks to disseminate the benefits of trade facilitation and the standards, tools and requirements for its successful implementation. The project will focus on trade facilitation promoted by: (a) enhanced knowledge and understanding of governments and business regarding trade facilitation and the role of ICT; (b) enhanced use of ICT by SMEs in trade facilitation, and (c) national capacity-building for trade facilitation negotiations.

Information technologies in trade facilitation and their use by msmes

This issue of the Bulletin is based on the material presented at the seminar Information Technology for Development of Small and Medium-sized Exporters in East Asia and Latin America, which was held on 23 and 24 November 2004 at the headquarters of ECLAC in Santiago, Chile. The seminar was part of the project entitled Comparative Study on East Asian and Latin American IT Industry, financed by the thematic fund for information and communication technologies (ICT) for development of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and has been carried out in close collaboration with the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE), an organization that belongs to the Japanese External Trade Organization (JETRO). This article contains a discussion of the concepts, definitions and standards associated with electronic commerce, as well as the opportunities to be seized and the challenges to be met so that MSMEs can expand their electronic business.

Trade facilitation in the mulitilateral framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO)

This article is a follow-up to the FAL Bulletin No. 167, in the sense that it considers developments in trade facilitation within WTO. Its focus, however, is exclusively on what has occured within WTO in this area. Emphasis is placed not only on expanding on, but also on updating the relevant background information presented on the Subject in FAL No. 167. An attempt has been made to incorporate some analytical elements into an orientation that is primarily descriptive.

Facilitation of international trade in goods

The FAL Bulletin is reverting to its original concept, that is, facilitation of trade in the broad sense. In the context of ECLAC, this is a topic covered by the International Trade Unit in the International Trade and Development Finance Division, to which the Transport Unit also belonged until it was incorporated into the Natural Resources and Infrastructure Division in April 1999.In an effort at inter-divisional cooperation starting with this issue, the International Trade Unit will be responsible for preparing four articles per year on trade facilitation for the FAL Bulletin. These are certain to be of great interest not only to those of our readers concerned with multi-modal ocean transport and customs procedures but also to those with links to the broader issue of promoting foreign trade in the region.

Technical Notes on Trade Facilitation Measures

Towards the end of 2004, the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) formally launched negotiations on trade facilitation on the basis of the modalities set out in Annex D of the July Package adopted in 2004. This mandate instructed members to clarify and improve three articles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), namely, article V on freedom of transit, article VIII on fees and formalities connected with importation and exportation, and article X on the publication and administration of trade regulations. To support these negotiations, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) created a trust fund, with contributions from the Governments of Sweden and Spain . This fund has been used to develop a series of seminars and meetings and to produce a total of 20 technical notes on specific trade facilitation measures. These notes cover in particular facilitation measures that are topics of specific proposals that were made during WTO negotiations. This edition of the FAL Bulletin summarizes several of these technical notes, focusing mainly on customs-related issues.

Transport facilitation: Experts workshop in Peru

This issue of the FAL Bulletin analyze s transport facilitation and its impact on national competitiveness.

The Facilitation of trade in some integration agreements in the Americas

This article reviews the main progress observed as regards facilitation of trade in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Andean Community (CAN), the Central American Common Market (CACM) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). The article does not refer to the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) or the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), these integration agreements being dealt with in FAL Bulletins Nos. 171 and 175, respectively.

Defining trade facilitation at the international level

The present issue completes a series of articles which began with FAL Bulletin No. 167 and continued with FAL Bulletin Nos. 171, 175, 178, 181, 184 and 187. A compendium of these studies has been published in Spanish as Document No. 19 of the ECLAC Comercio internacional series (December 2001) under the title 'Facilitación del comercio: un concepto urgente para un tema recurrente'. The present issue of the FAL Bulletin summarizes that study.

Trade facilitation and Central American integration: Customs modernization

The development of trade facilitation and regional integration is closely linked to the efficiency of public services and the competitiveness of the companies that support export activity. The importance of trade facilitation measures has been emphasized in various issues of the FAL Bulletin. On this occasion the subject is be discussed from the point of view of regional integration, and a case in Central America is considered of particular interest. El Salvador and Guatemala, by integrating their electronic systems for obtaining export licenses, have been able to reduce waiting times significantly. In Guatemala, in December 2000, there was a waiting time of 24 hours, whereas in November 2004 the procedure took 1.5 minutes via the Internet. This issue of the Bulletin is based on research into electronic government initiatives related to foreign trade, which is being conducted by the International Trade and Integration Division.