It is always a pleasure to read the magazine of the International Trade Centre and I was particularly impressed with issue 1/2001 on Reaping the Digital Dividend.

Exploiting e-opportunities and e-challenges in the years to come will obviously make a vast difference in how countries grow. E-commerce has tremendous potential to build the competitive advantage of developing countries and while many of them are on the threshold of rapid change and development, harnessing e-commerce technology is vital for building critical momentum in the economy and pumping up the rate of growth.

In June 2001, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), India’s apex industry organization, released a report entitled “E-Commerce in India: How to make it happen?”

This report will contribute to the formulation of a long-term vision for the development of e-commerce in India, and a near-term direction for policy. Adoption of such a strategy by Indian business will facilitate access to global markets and help to enhance the global supplier base, thereby giving a big boost to competitiveness and substantially accelerating the rate of growth. The same lessons could also apply to other developing nations.

Zubin Kabraji, Director
Confederation of Indian Industry
Mumbai, India zubin.kabraji@ciionline.org

I think Forum is an excellent magazine. It presents relevant trade-related information in a very understandable manner. The case studies/articles that share information on experiences, such as those on SMEs and use of the Internet as a marketing strategy for rural women (issue 3/2000), are eye-openers. I am not sure how widely your magazine is read in the Caribbean, but I am positive it should be read by as many as possible.

I think I can spread the information to a wider Caribbean readership. There are many initiatives ongoing and in the planning stage which can benefit from the lessons learnt by others. I am thrilled that you encourage reprints and references to Forum articles and I will take the opportunity to summarize/reproduce them (with proper credits) in our IICA newsletters.

In a nutshell, I think the Forum is an excellent messenger of trade-related information and continue looking forward to receiving and reading it. It is very helpful in my line of work.

Diana E. Francis, Economist, Policies and Trade
Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Trinidad and Tobago Office defdom@yahoo.com

We were delighted to receive issue 3/2000 of Forum as well as ITC’s World Directory of Trade Promotion Organizations. We learned a lot about electronic commerce from issue 3/2000. The comparisons of various countries’ experiences featured in the magazine helped us to reposition our own project to establish a scientific network for international trade and e-commerce, which will become operational soon.

As a matter of fact, issues of Forum dating from 1998, 1999 and 2000 have already proved very useful to our centre.

Côme Omores, Manager, Scientific network for international trade and e-commerce, Akpakpa, Cotonou, Benin comores1971@yahoo.fr

Thank you for sending me Offshore Back Office Operations (featured in issues 3/2000 and 1/2001). I am a registered translating agency with a German company which is already giving me work. We are in the final stages of being registered by other firms in Spain, France and the United States. Because of this, Togolese translators have decided to stay here to act as outsourced personnel for us, despite the general economic situation.

How I wish I had read Forum much more seriously and had used the services of ITC earlier! Now I am confident about rebuilding my crippled company with negligible financial outlay and above all without recourse to any external loans.

Akoli Penoukou, Manager, Ets. Pyramide, Lomé, Togo, etspyramide@onebox.com

ITC recently took part in a one-day conference in Lithuania (Vilnius, September 2001) which was a follow-up to the World Tr@de Net workshop (Riga, May 2001) on the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC). During the conference, some 200 textile and garment exporters, mainly from the Baltic states, discussed changes in store for international textile and clothing trade when the ATC comes to an end in about three years time.

Today, one of the major concerns of Baltic producers and exporters is their changing role in the marketplace. The European Union (EU) markets remain an attractive target for them, but once their countries become EU members, Baltic exporters will have to follow the EU’s import policy in relation to non-EU countries. At the conference, ITC offered the following solutions: aim to supply relatively small markets (such as the Nordic countries, which should be natural targets) with small and flexible production; and focus on upgrading quality and niche market products to avoid a head-on collision with Asian mass producers.

The participants also learned of ITC’s ongoing activity in this sector as part of the World Tr@de Net programme.

For more information, contact Matthias Knappe, ITC Senior Market Development Officer, at knappe@intracen.org

The China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) will host the fourth World Conference of Trade Promotion Organizations (TPOs) in Beijing, China from 15 to 17 May 2002. This will be the first time that the World Conference of TPOs, the biennial meeting of national trade promotion organizations, is held in Asia. Previous meetings have been in Cartagena, Colombia in 1996; Santiago, Chile in 1998; and Marrakech, Morocco in 2000. TPOs can find full details of the programme and other arrangements for the Beijing conference in the next issue of Forum and on the TPO WorldNet web site (http://www.tpo-worldnet.com) as soon as they are available.

For more information, contact Philip Williams, ITC Senior Adviser on Institutional Aspects of Trade Promotion, at williams@intracen.org

His Excellency Maître Abdoulaye Wade, President of the Republic of Senegal welcomed J. Denis Bélisle, ITC’s Executive Director, in the presence of Mrs. Aicha Agne Pouye, Minister for Trade and SMEs, prior to the opening of the Symposium on Senegalese trade development. All participated in the Symposium, in the company of His Excellency Denis Thibault, Ambassador of Canada to Senegal.

The League of Arab States, the Organization of African Unity, the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) and other regional and national institutions organized the 5th Afro-Arab Trade Fair in Lebanon (Tripoli, October 2001). The meeting’s goal was to bring together business people from the two regions and enable them to create joint ventures and trade deals.

For the event, ITC and BADEA worked together to design, develop and organize a CyberCafé which was very helpful given the lack of a specialized search engine for business information at the venue. ITC’s CyberCafés provide trade information electronically to help trade fair participants conclude business transactions. On this occasion, the CyberCafé provided participants with Internet access, and also featured a 1,400 web site index to online trade information sources on Arab and African countries on CD-ROM. The sites were categorized by country, as well as by information type, including country profiles and information; trade statistics, opportunities; fairs and exhibitions, as well as e-commerce information. The CD also provided a list of national search engines; a trade flow analysis between Arab and African regions; and answers to the 105 most frequently asked questions about e-commerce.

This is the second time that ITC and BADEA have worked together to help inter-regional trade. The first time was during the 4th Afro-Arab Trade Fair in Senegal (Dakar, April 1999). Planning is now under way for future joint projects in Africa.

For more information about ITC’s CyberCafés, contact Emmanuel Barreto, ITC Trade Promotion Adviser, at barreto@intracen.org To order a copy of the CD-ROM, send an e-mail to badea@badea.org

More than 60 companies from six member countries of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), attended the first ECO Buyers-Sellers Meeting on Textiles and Clothing (Istanbul, October 2001). The representatives from Azerbaijan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Turkey and Uzbekistan found that the meeting provided a unique platform to develop business links, identify regional investment opportunities and establish other forms of partnerships including joint ventures.

The meeting formed one of several ECO, ITC and United Nations Development Programme initiatives, which aim to expand intra-regional trade among ECO member states. Other ECO members include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

The buyers-sellers meeting was organized jointly by ITC and the ECO Secretariat in cooperation with the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce and was the first event of its kind for ITC in the ECO region.

For more information, contact Giuseppe Belsito, ITC Regional Trade Development Adviser, at belsito@intracen.org

The Omani Centre for Investment, Promotion and Export Development (OCIPED) launched the Oman TradeMap and Trade Secrets: The Export Answer Book (Oman, October 2001). Some 130 people, including leading industrialists and national strategy-makers, attended the launch ceremony. Oman TradeMap will help small exporters to identify competitive international markets using comparative statistical data. The national version of Trade Secrets answers 148 questions facing most exporters in Oman. The official launch of these tools, jointly produced by OCIPED and ITC, was followed by an intensive question-and-answer session

For more information about TradeMaps, contact Friedrich von Kirchbach, Chief, ITC Market Analysis Section, at kirchbach@intracen.org For more information about Trade Secrets, contact Hema Menon, ITC Associate Adviser, at menon@intracen.org

Major Markets for Cotton T-shirts. 115 pages (Technical Paper). Market survey on cotton T-shirts in the European Union (with particular reference to Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden), United States and Japan — discusses international textile trade in general terms and in relation to WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing; presents major markets and their characteristics; outlines documentary and shipping requirements, relevant legislation, contact specifications, quality control methods and environmental issues; contains statistical data.

International Trade Rules: Business Questions about the World Trading System and the WTO. 116 pages (Technical Paper). Guide aimed at small and medium enterprises in developing and least developed countries, and economies in transition, answering questions related to impact of the multilateral trading system and WTO Trade Agreements on business environment — addresses issues such as implementation and enforcement of the Agreements, dispute settlement mechanism of WTO, implications for international trade, involvement of developing and least developed member states in WTO negotiations, and effects of removal of trade barriers on business; includes references for more in-depth information on specific issues; list of WTO member states and a glossary of related terms.

Trade in Euro: A guide for enterprises and trade support agencies in developing and transition countries. 80 pages (Technical Paper). Guide analysing implications of the introduction of the euro for small and medium enterprises in developing countries, it describes economic, commercial and financial environment resulting from creation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and its impact on non-European countries; examines practical consequences of the introduction of euro for enterprises outside the euro zone; outlines practical adjustments to be considered by these enterprises for conducting advantageous commercial relationships with euro-zone countries; provides overview of EMU and describes main steps leading to full implementation of the euro.