One year on - Partnership agreement with the Pakistan Institute of Trade and Development and the World Trade Institute (en)

The Pakistan Institute of Trade and Development (PITAD), the World Trade Institute (WTI) and the International Trade Centre (ITC) met on 20 January 2012 at WTI in Bern, Switzerland, to review progress on the first year of a partnership agreement between the WTI and PITAD.

The partnership agreement, facilitated by ITC in the context of component 1 of the TRTA II programme, is aimed at building the institutional capacity of PITAD through the direct support of WTI, an internationally renowned institute of excellence in the field of trade regulation. WTI support is aimed at enabling PITAD (supported by other local training and research institutes) to build their capacity for delivering training and producing research according to international best standards. An important aspect of the agreement is the development of training modules under the guidance of WTI mentors which will become part of a joint WTI-PITAD certificate course on International Trade Law and Commercial Diplomacy.

Rajesh Aggarwal, ITC Chief of Business and Trade Policy, said, "The partnership between ITC, WTI and PITAD is aimed at training the trainers in a beneficiary country with state of the art knowledge on trade negotiations. In particular, the PITAD will augment its institutional capacity to run  training courses for  government officers on trade negotiations, which is the core function of this institute."

Participants of the meeting agreed that progress in 2011 had generally been sound, and a similar process should be undertaken in 2012. In this regard, a further seven trade policy modules were agreed to be developed by Pakistani Master Trainers with the support of leading WTI international experts, they were:

• Trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights
• Trade remedies
• Dispute settlement
• Trade and investment
• Trade, environment and climate change
• The economics and policy of non-tariff measures
• Assessing the effects of PTAs: measurement methodologies

Left to right:

Mr. Rajesh Aggarwal, Chief, Business and Trade Policy, ITC
Mr. Pierre Sauvé, Deputy Managing Director and Director of Studies, World Trade Institute (WTI), Bern, Switzerland
Mr. Asaf Ghafoor, Director-General, Pakistan Institute for Trade and Development (PITAD), Islamabad, Pakistan
Mr. Jean Sébastien-Roure, Senior Officer, Business and Trade Policy, ITC
Mr. Andrew Huelin, Associate Advisor, Business and Trade Policy, ITC