Aid for Trade: What Have we Learnt? Which way Ahead?

The Foundation for International Development Study and Research (Ferdi), the International Trade Center (ITC) and the World Bank organized a Conference titled: « Aid for Trade: What Have we Learnt? Which way Ahead? » on Thursday, December 6, 2012. It will take place in Geneva, Switzerland.

Launched at the Hong Kong ministerial in 2005, the Aid for Trade (AfT) Initiative has now been monitored in three Global Reviews. These reviews have reported case studies and proposed effectiveness indicators with the beginning of more formal evaluations of performance just starting to appear (e.g. the recent 2011 volume “Where to Spend the Next Million: Applying Impact Evaluation to Trade Assistance” WB/CEPR (O. Cadot, A. Fernandes, J. Gourdon, A. Mattoo eds.).

With the support of the FERDI, ITC and the WB, a one-day workshop was held at International Conference Centre in Geneva on Thursday December 6 to take stock on recent progress. The focus was twofold: the morning session took a cross-country perspective and focus on macro performance (e.g. export capacity) while the afternoon session was on impact evaluation mostly at the sector/firm level.

This event was an important occasion to bring together the Geneva trade policy community, including academics and researchers at International Organizations and think tanks, to take stock of what has been learnt on evaluating Aid for Trade effectiveness.
It was also an opportunity to demonstrate to the development community that, notwithstanding the difficulties involved in the identification of causal links and attribution, with better performance monitoring, project design and data collection, it is possible to evaluate more rigorously what does and what does not work.