ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: Pakistan has proposed to the WTO that Aid-for-Trade (AfT) initiative should be a long-term project and it should not be dependent upon frequent change of governments, which happens in many developing countries.

It was one of the Pakistani proposals in the country position on the initiative during the first annual review of Aid-for-Trade (AfT) meeting held recently in Geneva.

Pakistan called for predictability and clarity for AfT initiative to help developing countries move from making trade possible to making trade happen, an official told Dawn on Monday.

Almost two years ago -- at the 2005 Hong Kong conference -- ministers gave the WTO a mandate to help developing countries, especially the least developed ones, build trade capacity they need to take advantage of trade openings.

Pakistan’s Permanent Ambassador to WTO Dr Manzoor Ahmad spoke about documents circulated and said these showed that less than 10 per cent of the WTO members from developing countries responded to the questionnaire.

“There can be various reasons, but one difficulty is the nature of the questions, which demands replies from several ministries within any administration. It requires coordination among various ministries and departments,” he said.

He pointed out that aid was negotiated by one ministry; accountability was for another department within the government and so on. The same issue applies at the international level. The WTO has the mandate to monitor aid for trade, he said.

“Some efforts will have to be made to encourage members to have more clarity as to how this work is to be coordinated at the national level. This is also one of the recommendations of the task force. The involvement of trade ministers, as well as finance ministers, is a very positive step,” he said.

Dr Manzoor said from the figures and other data it became obvious that AfT was dependent upon political circumstances. “In our own case, we sometime see sudden influx of experts with lots of duplication of efforts and then substantial reduction of aid. There will always be some politics, but if we can make it a little more predictable”, he added.

Deputy Director General Valentine gave the sum of $8 billion. This is very substantial package, but the common perception is that most of the AfT is repackaged from what was already there.

“We recognise that there is no agreed definition of the AfT and it will not be easy to quantify additionality.

“One of the things developed countries can do is to place all the tariffs they collect from developing countries in a special AfT fund,” he proposed.

Mr Manzoor said if there was a system to check waste, a substantial percentage of funds could be funnelled back to donors.