World Bank and SPS

With special emphasis on the recently established multi-

donor Standards and Trade Facility

Cees de Haan Agriculture and Rural Department, World

Bank

Outline of Presentation

Context of WB involvement in Standard and Trade Issues; and

World Bank support for Standards and Trade Development Facility at WTO.

Context of WB involvement in Standard and Trade Issues

Overall context of WB’s involvement of trade

Increased attention to trade issues: Increased advocacy from WB Senior

Management for developing country interests (subsidies, SPS);

Increased awareness of importance of exports for rural poverty reduction;

Increased demand from developing countries; Creation of new Trade Department; and Significant increase in research work on trade

and SPS issues.

On-going WB Standards/SPS Work

Three areas: Methodology development Country and regional assessments Implementation

On-going WB Standards/SPS Work

Methodology development and global priority setting; Economic research on impact and policy

options regarding technical barriers to trade, including SPS;

SPS toolkit for priority setting in policies and investments; and

Cost of compliance study to identify key areas for intervention, including capacity building.

On-going WB Standards/SPS Work

Country and regional assessments Food Safety workshops to bring

together international organizations and regional and national authorities for development of action plans on capacity building; and

Standards, capacity building and trade in SSA.

On-going WB Standards/SPS Work

Country and regional assessments (ii) Integrated framework for trade related

technical assistance to least developed countries;

Interagency program to prepare comprehensive action plans to integrate least developed and low income countries in trade (including SPS)

Goes beyond trade ministries; and Feeds directly in other poverty reduction

strategies

On-going WB Standards/SPS Work

Implementation Standards and Trade Development

Facility (more to follow); Action plans resulting from IF, TBT

assessments, national/regional workshops, and SSA assessment; and

WB investment operations.

WB investment operations in SPS/Trade sectors

Some common characteristics: Component of larger rural development

operations; Focusing on holistic approaches (farm to table); Combining institutional reforms with investments

in hardware and software capacity building; Relying on partners for expertise; and Increasing need to co-financing of capacity

building components. Some US $ 150 million per year in new

commitments in SPS capacity building

Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF)

A work in Progress

Background to STDF Increased awareness of need to integrate

developing countries in international trading systems;

Increased demand from developing countries; Joint Doha declaration of Heads of FAO, OIE, WHO,

WTO and WB for closer cooperation in SPS related issues, and “jointly explore financial and technical mechanisms for coordination and resource mobilization, and build alliances between standard-setting bodies (Codex, IPPC and OIE), and implementing and financing agencies” and

Coordination meetings between agencies already on-going.

WB Funding of STDF at WTO

Key objective is to facilitate and support: Coordination of development assistance of partner

institutions in SPS; Capacity enhancement of developing countries to

participate in standard setting; Capacity building of public and private sectors to

comply and benefit of international trade, as affected by SPS;

US $ 300,000 per year seed money from WB for up to 3 years;

Note: Facilitation not Implementation; and Complementing not substituting

Specific activities of STDFSupport and facilitation of Informal information exchange (meetings,

training activities/material, toolkits) for better coordination of activities of participating organizations with developing countries;

Funding capacity building projects in countries/regions, with public and private sectors; and

Complementing activities of all partners to support developing countries in standard setting.

Proposed Operation of STDF High level Policy Committee to set and approve

overall policy agenda, and evaluate progress; Consultative meetings with developing countries,

donors, other partners on needs and priorities; Technical level Working Group, to prepare and

approve detailed work plans (type of databases, developing country activities, countries, implementing agencies/consortia, time schedule, resource mobilization, reporting);

Small Secretariat to support facilitate these activities; and

Now finalizing guidelines and draft work plan

Thank you