Bhutan, Cambodia Share Experience on Trade Strategy

Friday, 20 November 2009 03:00 administrator .

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

Cambodia is sharing the experience about trade strategies with Bhutan partner as Cambodia, like Bhutan officially a least developed country (LDC), has already joined the WTO and with

Bhutan now a likely candidate for WTO membership, a Cambodian trade official said on Thursday.

"We told them about the benefit of the aid for development on trade unit and we also have got the aid from other partners to help private side and public in the purpose to strengthen our ability on trade and produce the goods for export to international markets," Pan Sorasak, secretary of state for Commerce Ministry told reporters at a meeting at the Cambodiana Hotel.

"We also got 'aid for trade'- that is very important for us and for you [Bhutan] to join to develop our country and help reduce poverty and seek jobs for local people, increased skills for people and produce more products for export," he noted. "Even though Bhutan and Cambodia is two kingdoms in Asia but we do not have large bilateral trade.

I do not know what kind of ways and trade that we could help to boost trade with each other but we could share experience for trade."

Government officials from the Ministry of Commerce, with support from UNDP, will host the workshop for the Bhutanese delegation to share information on Cambodia's experience in trade mainstreaming, and how Integrated Framework (IF) and EIF funds and technical support have been instrumental in pushing for the country's domestic reforms, a press release from the meeting said.

As an LDC, Bhutan is a candidate for accession to the World Trade Organization. Recently, Bhutan has applied to the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) fund, a multi-donor initiative aimed at supporting LDCs in mainstreaming trade development into their country's national development plans to support poverty reduction. Bhutan is now preparing to develop their DTIS.

The Government of Bhutan has turned to Cambodia to learn more about its successful EIF implementation, subsequent reforms, government commitment and ownership of Trade SWAp.

InCambodia, the Government is taking the lead in establishing and formulating the Trade SWAp, or Sector-Wide approach, as a framework to implement Cambodia's trade strategy in partnership with Development Partners and the private sector.

Cambodia has been at the forefront among other LDCs to secure funds from the IF program. Cambodia was one of the first LDCs to produce (in 2002) and update (in 2007) its Trade Development Strategy DTIS and to successfully gain access to EIF Tier 1 funding, which serves to address capacity and organizational needs to support mainstream trade development into their national development agenda.