Monday, 10 October 2011

Stakeholders Set To Gain From Trade Policy Course

Stakeholders from various English-speaking countries in West Africa are prepared to gain expertise on enhancing their regional and multilateral trade policy design and implementation, after the end of a four-day capacity-building course on trade policy organised by the ECOWAS Commission in collaboration with the African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC) – a syndicate based at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).
The course was aimed at strengthening the analytical capacities and knowledge of ECOWAS Member States on market analysis tools for trade flow analysis and interpreting the outcomes of trade negotiations modeling, in order for them to enhance their regional and multilateral trade policy, a Communiqué from the bloc reads.

Senior Government official from the Trade Ministry [The Gambia] posed with trainers and trainees

Mr Kola Sofola, Principal Programme Officer, ECOWAS Trade Directorate, who briefed journalists on the thematic issues discussed at the training, said the member states of the regional bloc are signatory to a number of Preferential Trade Agreements, and are currently engaged in a number of negotiations with other third party countries.

He highlighted the importance of the training to these negotiations, saying “Robust trade analysis will be an important factor in the decision making process.”
An extraordinary piece of software for trade analysis called TradeSift was designed to help trainees in providing them with robust and consistent analysis of trade and trade policy choices without requiring sophisticated modeling.
Dr Michael Gasiorek, TradeSift Managing Director said: “TradeSift was developed in response to the perceived lack of capacity in developing countries to engage effectively in trade negotiations and analysis of trade policy options.
TradeSift allows for rapid and easily comprehensible analysis of trade based on economic principles and provides a low cost solution to trade policy capacity building in developing countries.”

He explained that using the TradeSift software enables the accessibility of users to readily available international data and national databases that are crucial for researchers, academic institutions and journalists. It is a very valuable resource tool for people worldwide and there is a great scope for the use of TradeSift in understanding trade and commerce policies of countries around the world.

“Engaging international trade is really part of our focus. Trade is a significant part of development,” Dr Gasiorek, who also a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex UK, said.

Participants at the training hailed the work of TradeSift, saying, “Access to useful information in free of charge is indeed a commendable step.”
Fifatin Dominique, Trade Directorate ECOWAS Commission, who also spoke to journalists on the importance of using TradeSift, said, “Our region is new to analyzing trade. We do not have enough capacities in our region [to analysis trade policy]. Our region insisted on [the side] of the development aspect only.”
He applauded the ECOWAS Commission for the support and commitment it attaches to trade, saying the training is “very helpful and useful to the region; both at the multilateral and bilateral level.”

Senior government officials from various countries in the ECOWAS member states attended the training. Sarah Ollerenshaw, Economic Operations Manager of TradeSift as well as Maximiliano Mendez Parra, Executive Director of Iteas Consulting -- A multicultural and multilingual consortium of experts aim to providing innovative solutions that push the boundaries of international trade analysis -- also shared their expertise with participants during the course of the four-day capacity building exercise.

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