NEED FOR INTERNAL COORDINATION AND CONSULTATION

  NEED FOR INTERNAL COORDINATION AND CONSULTATION While the activities most typically associated with the trade ministry concern relations w...

 

NEED FOR INTERNAL COORDINATION AND CONSULTATION While the activities most typically associated with the trade ministry concern relations with its foreign counterparts, the day-to-day operations of that ministry will more typically involve domestic consultations. Properly conceived, the most important function of the trade ministry in a developing country is to ensure that country’s trade instruments — including its international agreements and domestic laws — serve the broader interest of promoting national development. The trade ministry is also tasked with ensuring that the other laws and agreements of the country are consistent with the legal obligations that it has undertaken in WTO and other agreements. Taken together, these functions constitute the domestic diplomacy of trade policymaking. In order to act effectively as the country’s agent abroad, the ministry must be intimately engaged in policymaking at home. That domestic diplomacy requires that the ministry in charge of this topic coordinate closely with other government agencies, and consult fully with representatives of civil society. 

That is necessary not 54 TRADE POLICY FRAMEWORKS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A MANUAL OF BEST PRACTICES Box 6. Capacity-building programmes for trade officials Numerous programmes are available to help trade ministries and other government agencies overcome their skills deficits. Some of these are hosted (and often paid for) by international organizations, while others are offered by universities on either a degree or a non-degree basis. The choice of which type of programme to pursue, and where to pursue it, depends in part on how much time and money a ministry or its employees can afford to invest. While tuition and other costs for some university programmes can be high, assistance may be available from development banks and other donors; further information can be had from the WTO’s Global Trade-Related Technical Assistance Database. For those already in government, the most significant expense may be the opportunity cost of time spent out of the office. The investment should nevertheless pay off if programmes impart the needed skills. Expenses can also be reduced by using the online training modules that WTO increasingly favours over face-to-face courses. UNCTAD provides toolbox on trade-related capacity building support and training for trade negotiators and policymakers from developing countries on Trade Policy Frameworks, multilateral and regional trade negotiations including WTO accession, and services development and trade, including Services Policy Reviews (SPRs). Of particular note is UNCTAD’s toolkit on services, combining analytical studies on all aspects of services including services sector development and structural transformation, Service Policy Reviews, Multi-year Expert Meeting on Trade Services and Development and the Global Services Forum. Through SPRs, UNCTAD supports policymakers in assessing the potential of services capacities as well as various options for policy, regulatory and institutional frameworks, the findings of which could be fed into national policymaking and international trade negotiating process. Trade Policy Framework supported national trade policy stakeholders in raising awareness and building their understanding on the contribution of trade to sustainable development and the formulation of Sustainable Development Goal-oriented trade policy frameworks. Training is also available from universities, where programmes can last anywhere from days to years. At one extreme are the masters or even doctoral programmes in public policy that allow students to specialize in trade and related fields.

 The Paris School of International Affairs and Sciences Po, for example, jointly administer a Master’s in International Economic Policy programme. Some universities have specialized, one-year programmes that grant interdisciplinary master’s degrees in this field, such as: The International Economic Law and Policy (IELPO) programme at the University of Barcelona; The Shridath Ramphal Centre for International Trade Law, Policy and Services, University of the West Indies; and, The University of Bern’s World Trade Institute has a programme. Some universities have much shorter executive education programmes that are built around the needs of busy professionals. The Harvard Kennedy School’s course entitled Mastering Trade Policy compresses a semester of economics, law, and negotiations theory into 10 intensive days. Other schools with non-degree programmes on trade and related topics include the College of Europe, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the London School of Economics, and the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Some schools also offer specialized courses to be delivered either onsite or at the university’s home campus. merely to ensure that trade policy per se is effective, but also to make it consonant with the broader development goals of the country. While trade and development goals are not in direct conflict, reconciling their sometimes-divergent objectives can raise difficult questions of priorities and coherence. The expanding subject matter of trade policy multiplies the risk that officials in different areas of public policy might work at cross purposes. In the absence of a cooperative and collegial approach among all ministries with an interest in trade-related matters, negotiators will not have the information they need to reach agreements with their foreign counterparts, nor can they be certain of receiving the political support necessary to approve and implement these agreements at home. In this age of deeper integration and wider commitments, there is also greater jeopardy that a ministry with jurisdiction over some traderelated topic (broadly defined) may unknowingly take action that violates a pledge the country has made to its partners in WTO or some other trade agreement.