© International Trade Centre, International Trade Forum
- Issue 4/1999
To encourage economic growth through export-led development, ITC
believes that technical assistance is most needed in three areas:
helping businesses understand WTO rules; strengthening enterprise
competitiveness; and developing new trade promotion strategies.
In this issue, ITC reports on how it conveyed these messages
about building national capacity at the Third WTO Ministerial
Conference in Seattle. See ITC's opening article, "National
Capacity for Export Growth." The article inaugurates a new magazine
section, ITC Speaks, which will be featured in future issues.
The heart of this magazine issue highlights the ITC Executive
Forum, a three-day event in Annecy, France which gathered trade
promotion officials, business executives and academic experts from
22 countries to review trade promotion strategies in today's
fast-moving trade environment. Three themes emerged from the
meeting: sharpening competitiveness, attracting foreign investment
and joining the global supply chain to move up the value-added
ladder.
From setting the scene in which trade development operates
today, to outlining future directions, readers will find examples
of national export strategies, checklists for competitiveness,
photos and excerpts of views expressed at the event. A two-page
mini-poster in the centre of the magazine summarizes the challenges
to redefine trade promotion.
Elsewhere in this issue, Market Profile outlines new marketing
challenges for age-old products, traditional carpets and kilims.
Exporting Better contains tips to improve documentation for letters
of credit, in response to requests for more export finance
information. We are pleased to announce several new ITC
publications, many of which focus on business information not
easily found elsewhere about the WTO rules. We also present a new
ITC CD-ROM that builds upon the trade success story of legal reform
in western Africa
Finally, readers may note that three Forum issues have been
planned to match the three priority areas outlined by ITC. The last
issue (Forum 3/1999) focused on ITC's tools to sharpen a firm's
capacity to enter export markets. This issue concentrates on
national trade development strategies. The next issue will provide
business information about the WTO rules for developing
countries.
As always, we continue to welcome contributions and encourage
you to reprint articles of relevance.
Natalie Domeisen