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CONTENTS:
Developing county participation in international trade
DFID - BMZ - PTB - UNCTAD - UNIDO -Cerrex - World Bank
moving forward the standards agenda
Montreal Protocol - UNIDO Refrigerant Management Plan
to phase out CFCs in Sudan's service sector
COMING SOON
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Feature: Fighting marginalization and the technology gap
PRINT-FRIENDLY VERSIONS of UNIDOScope
Developing Country participation in international trade
DFID - BMZ - PTB - UNCTAD - UNIDO - Cerrex - World Bank
moving forward the standards agenda
London, UK, August 4, 2003
The last issue of UNIDOScope reported on the UNIDO - UNCTAD - WTO - ITC
workshop for six LDCs in East Africa. The East Africa meeting was the first in a series of
three meetings leading up to a high-level Roundtable Making Trade Work for the Poor: stimulating
the real economy's response at the UNIDO General Conference in December, 2003. The East African
workshop looked at obstacles to LDC participation in global trade across the whole "product to market
chain". Standards are important links in that chain: Developing countries have to produce competitive
exportable products that conform to international standards; and they need the infrastructure and
capacities to prove that their products conform.
The UK Department for International Development (DFID) hosted a seminar in London on August 4, 2003 that brought together representatives of BMZ ( German Ministry for Economic Cooperation), PTB (German Metrology Institute), the World Bank, UNCTAD (UN Conference on Trade and Development), UNIDO and Cerrex, the UK investment and export promotion company. All of the participants are active in assisting developing countries build their standards-related capacities and infrastructures. DFID's intention in holding the seminar is to come up with concrete action plans for country assistance. As DFID Chief Economist, Adrian Wood said in his opening statement, standards can create barriers to trade, their number is growing, and standards and conformity assessment in developing countries show evident market failures that need corrective actions, especially regarding gaps in information and coordination. All participants agree with Mr. Wood that important gains can be made in development assistance by increasing collaboration.
Although title of the seminar, Moving Forward the Standards Agenda: Inter-Agency Cooperation and Action Plans for Country Assistancedoes not mention Africa or the objective of furthering developing country participation in international trade, Standards and Global Trade: A Voice for Africa, a recent World Bank publication presented at the meeting by co-author, John Wilson, gets the message through loud and clear. The following words from foreword to Standards and Global Trade give the rationale behind the seminar, the importance of trade to developing countries, the need to focus on African developing countries, and the importance of standards as one of the vital links in the "product to market" chain.
"Trade is a crucial driver of growth, yet Africa with 10% of world population, represents less than 2% of world trade. Most African economies are small and provide limited national markets for local trade that can spur faster growth rates for development. As a result, the pursuit of better access to foreign markets is a crucial component of Africas development strategy. Yet, the erosion in the regions share of world trade between 1970s and 1990s represents approximately $70 billion, or about one-fifth of its gross domestic product (GDP)".
"Africa includes many of the worlds poorest countries, with 300 million of its people living on less than 1$ a day. Simply halving the number of the continents poor by 2015 will require an approximate annual growth of about 7% as well as more equitable distribution of income. Increasing its engagement in international trade and improving penetration of global markets can help achieve this pace of growth. While there are many complementary actions that are needed to improve the investment climate so as to allow a higher growth rate to be achieved, addressing the effect of product standards both as barriers to trade and opportunities to expand market access is likely to be one area where action will have a high rate of return".
"In expanding trade, the link between standards, access to foreign markets, and development is at the forefront of policy debate. This is particularly true with regard to Africa. African countries face critical challenges in improving domestic capacity to meet production and quality standards that are required in foreign markets. As this volume documents, this process will include; (1) enhancing production practices, (2) improving quality assurance and management systems by firms, and (3) better monitoring, evaluation, product testing and packaging methods, to respond to changing technical requirements of trading partners. Institutional reforms, investment in human capital and infrastructure improvements in laboratories and facilities are also necessary".
"However, Africas investment in promoting exports in compliance with international norms will be more beneficial if its trading partners (particularly in Europe and the United States) advance complementary trade policies. These include reduction in agriculture subsidies that depress international product prices, reduction in high tariffs that restrict higher-end value imports, and elimination of non-tariff measures that limit trade, including restrictive standards and technical regulation, duplicative testing and certification procedures, rules of origin, and antidumping duties".
"Non-compliance with international standards deprives African farmers access to key international markets, and may lead to a further reduction in global market shareespecially in agricultural products like horticulture and fisheries, and light manufactures like textiles. Without addressing market access and international standards compliance issues, African firms and farmers will be unable to take full advantage of recent market opening initiatives such as the US African Growth and Opportunity Act and the EUs Everything But Arms initiative".
"There is a strong need to support and strengthen effective programs and initiatives designed to improve the ability to comply with international standards and to support the harmonization of technical regulations regionally". The author then refers to the "new Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) established by the World Bank and partner agencies OIE (World Animal Health Organization), WTO, WHO (World Health Organization) and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) to strengthen donor coordination in enhancing the capacity of developing countries in meeting Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) standards (standards related to food safety, and plant and animal health). UNIDO participation in the STDF under discussion.
The DFID seminar on Moving Forward the Standards Agenda: Inter-Agency Cooperation and Action Plans for Country Assistance, is more than an important first step towards its own immediate objectives. In drawing attention to Standards and Global Trade: A Voice for Africa, and the World Bank STDF mechanism, it raises the question of a mechanisms in general: firstly for donor coordination in "standards- related issues (Metrology, Standards, Testing and Quality) and then a mechanism for donor coordination to address "trade-related" technical assistance and capacity building: a voice for Developing Countries and the multiplicity of issues it encompasses.
The DFID meeting was chaired by its International Trade Department Senior Economic Adviser, Susan Prowse. A paper by Ms. Prowse that looks at the big picture behind the DFID meeting, appeared in The World Economy, September 2002. Entitled The Role of International and National Agencies in Trade-related Capacity Building, the paper elaborates an issues-based approach to bring the main providers of trade-related capacity building, the multi and bilateral donors and the developing countries together in a way that ensures trade-related capacity building and technical assistance is considered in the context of other development needs.
Establishing such a mechanism for trade-related capacity building and technical assistance has to become a priority issue. In the meantime, enhancing collaboration to ensure development assistance is properly carried out in the field of trade and standards is a big enough job in itself and a good place to start. In her summing up of the seminar, getting down to the practical aspects of cooperation, Ms. Prowse suggested that "Early Warning Mechanisms" for small and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs) in LDCs might be an area to get the cooperation ball rolling, (the early warning mechanism would keep SMEs in LDCs informed of technical regulations and standards so that they don't end up becoming technical barriers to trade).
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| a framework for international cooperation |
The UNIDO presentation to the standards group, entitled Breaking the Trade Barrier, gave an overview of UNIDO activities from the 1967 UN/UNIDO World Conference on Industrialization of Developing Countries, where Standardisation was identified as priority area for UNIDO. It pointed out that the adoption of the Doha Development Agenda in November 2001 was a real milestone for UNIDO. It has meant that the development community has had to broaden its understanding of capacity building and technical assistance from "trade-related" to "trade/development- related". The focus on "development" means that "trade-related" capacity building and technical assistance now has to be an "integral component of comprehensive national development and poverty reduction stategies in the developing countries" and that the developing countries must have "the opportunity to trade processed products" (as distinct from commodities), as German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul put to a special UNCTAD meeting on Cancún on 22 July, 2003 (see UNIDOScope 3-9 August 2003).
As the UN Specialised agency with the specific mandate to build capacities in developing countries to produce processed products, Doha has given UNIDO and industrialization a new meaning. The UNIDO presentation showed how the Organization has extended its industry/trade outreach and increased its "trade-related" inter-agency cooperation. In addition to the special initiative Enabling Developing Countries to Participate in International Trade - Strengthening the Supply Capacity(see Feature article) launched in March 2002 at the International Conference on Financing for Development, UNIDO has signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with ISO, UNECE, ITC and UNCTAD and later in 2003, will sign with WTO. It has set up a Consultative group on Trade Capacity Building composed of UNIDO Member States (co-chaired by UK and Peru). It hosted the inaugural meeting of the Joint Committee on Developing Country Assistance in Metrology, Accreditation and Standardization (involving UNIDO, ISO, ILAC, BIPM, OIML, IEC and ITU-T) in April 2003. UNIDO has also developed joint implementation / cost sharing trade-related programmes in Central America, the Mekong Region, East/West Africa, Pakistan, Armenia and Yemen. The UNIDO presentation drew attention to some of its recent or ongoing standards programmes in Africa, Egypt, Central America and Sri Lanka (the World Bank publication cited above, Standards and Global Trade: A Voice for Africa makes reference to UNIDO assistance to Nigeria, Uganda and Mozambique).
The DFID Standards Agenda group will meet again in Autumn
Gerardo Patacconi, Tel: +43
1 26026 / 3605, E-mail: G.Patacconi@unido.org
Montreal Protocol - UNIDO Refrigerant Management Plan
to phase out CFCs in Sudan's service sector
Khartoum, Sudan, 3 July 2003On 3 July 2003, Sudans Minister for Industry, Ali Ahmed Osman, presided over the graduation of some 150 cooling and conditioning technicians from the Vocational Training Centre in Khartoum, Sudan. In Sudan, it is not the manufacturing sector, as it is in developed countries, but the service sector that is the dominant user of CFCs. The Sudanese heat means refrigerators need quite some maintenance. The certified technicians are licensed for their service business operation and qualified to train their colleagues. With courses underway in other Vocational Centres, it is expected the number of certified graduates will double in the next six to twelve months.
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Minister of Industry Osman also announced the distribution of equipment to ten Vocational Training
Centres, 45 workshops and three hundred small-scale entrepreneurs. The equipment will reduce the use
of ozone depleting substances known as Chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) or
freons (a trade name). Worth US$5,000 per unit, the equipment sucks used CFC from a refrigerator or
car air conditioner, reconstitutes it and puts it back for reuse. Without the equipment, the used CFC
is released into the atmosphere and replaced with fresh CFC. It was distributed by the Sudan Ozone
Office under the Montreal Protocol / UNIDO Refrigerant
Management Plan.
The UNIDO Project, which started in first quarter of 1999, has benefited from the strong support of Sudans President Omar al-Beshir. Other factors contributing to the projects success are the effective coordination by the Ministry of Environment of its activities with those of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and UNIDOs experience in other countries, such as Romania, where a similar programme came to a successful conclusion in 2002. The idea of the Refrigerant Management Plan is to control the use of CFC with the ultimate aim of stopping the import of CFC.
Since the demand for refrigerators and airconditioners is not wholly met by Sudanese manufacturers, one way of reducing the use of CFC in Sudan is to prohibit the import of appliances that use CFC. This Sudan has done. But as CFC and non-CFC refrigerators look the same, Customs Officers (under the Ministry of Finance) need testing equipment and training to tell the difference. So far the project has trained at least 100 customs officers in the use of the equipment. Sudan has approximately thirteen import / customs stations, with Port Sudan accounting for more than 50% imports.
In addition to attending to the needs of the Customs Department and the service sector, the project also provides the refrigerator and airconditioning manufacturers with the equipment needed to modify their production line to use CFC alternative.
To ensure efficient coordination and sustainability of the activities after the project end, a
core group of 10 people drawn from the University, the Ministries, the Vocational Center, the Ozone
Office and industry is being familiarized with the whole project and trained in the various skills
needed for smooth cooperation. On the service sector side, the sustainability of the workshops with
recycling equipment should be ensured as long as the cost of recycling the CFC is less than refilling
with fresh CFC. The project will ultimately provide some one thousand small workshops with the basic
tools needed to recycle the used refrigerant.
Ryuchi Oshima, Tel: +43 1
26026 / 3026, E-mail: R.Oshima@unido.org
COMING SOON
Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors' Summit 2003, Ahmedabad: September 28 to 30, 2003. A business conference and industrial exhibition providing a platform for one-to-one interaction, facilitating technology transfer and joint ventures. Supported by more than 100 project proposals in the seven sectors: Ports and Roads Infrastructure; Oil, Gas and Energy Infrastructure; Agro & Food Processing; Biotechnology, Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals; Minerals & Mining; Tourism Related Infrastructure. Registration form and project profiles are at the summit site www.vibrantgujarat.com
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Technology Foresight for Practitioners Training
Course 6-10 October 2003, Prague, Czech Republic: A five-day training course on
technology foresight for experts from Central and Eastern European Countries and the Newly
Independent States involved in designing and conducting national and regional foresight exercises.
Jointly organized by UNIDO in cooperation with the Technology Centre of the Academy of Sciences of
the Czech Republic, the course will include a brief introduction of foresight as a tool for shaping
the future and illustration of the range of issues to which foresight can and cannot be applied. The
final stage of the course will offer participants an opportunity to prepare their own foresight
exercise. More information on the course and an online application form is available at www.unido.org/doc/11422
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UNIDO Director- General Carlos Magariños is one of 16 executive heads of specialised agencies and UN Organizations (FAO, IAEA, ICAO, ILO, IMO, ITU, UNCTAD, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UPU, WHO, WIPO, WMO (see UN System map)) working together on the High-Level Summit Organizing Committee (HLSOC) of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). WSIS is seen as a unique opportunity for all key stakeholders to assemble at a high-level gathering and to develop a better understanding of the revolution that has given birth to the term "Information Society", and its impact on the international community. The first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), will be hosted by the Government of Switzerland, in Geneva, from 10 to 12 December 2003. It will address the broad range of themes concerning the Information Society and adopt a Declaration of Principles and plan of action, addressing the whole range of issues related to the Information Society.
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