UNIDO Europe and Newly Independent States Programme

Vienna, 22 June 2011

UNIDO activities in the thematic area of trade-capacity building

in the UN SPECA countries

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)utilizes its resources and expertise to support developing countries and economies in transition in their efforts to achieve sustainable industrial development.

As a technical cooperation agency, UNIDO designs and implements programmes focused on three thematic priorities, which directly respond to global development priorities. Trade capacity-building is one of them.

UNIDO is one of the largest providers of trade-related development services, offering customer-focused advice and integrated technical assistance in the areas of competitiveness, trade policies, industrial modernization and upgrading, compliance with trade standards, testing methods and metrology.

SPECA countries are benefiting from increasing participation in the global trading system. Thus, strengthening their capacity to participate in global trade is critical for their future economic growth. Especially after their accession to the WTO, their technical ability to enter into global production and value chains is crucial for successful participation in international trade.

With specific regard toSPECA countries, UNIDO is concerned over the revival of the trade relations that have a centuries-old historyas well asover entry into free market and open trade. At the same time,the integration of these economies into multilateral, bilateral or regional trade through WTO accession is a matter of immediate concern.

  • Against this background, UNIDO implemented a regional project on trade capacity-building for the member states of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO)in the areas ofstandardization, metrology, testing and quality (SMTQ) infrastructure, which was successfully completed in 2010.The project demonstrated the significance of mechanisms for elimination of non-tariff barriers to trade by strengthening the capacities of the Member States, so that they could begin harmonizing their certification procedures, thus enabling them to examine possibilities of entering into mutual recognition agreements.
  • The need assessments carried out under the project revealed that many ECO countries are using inadequate SMTQ infrastructure. To bridge this gap, UNIDO has developed a follow-up project aimed at strengthening the SMTQ infrastructure of the SPECA countries. The efforts in this direction will lead to the integration of the region in the international trade framework and therefore to the enhancement of trade and investment in the area covered by ECO countries.
  • At the same time and within the framework of the SPECA initiative, UNIDO developed a number of project proposals both at the regional and country levels – i.e. (i) a SPECA Regional Network for Conducive Business Environment, (ii) Agro-processing and Marketing for Small-scale Producer Groups in Kyrgyzstan, (iii) Strengthening the DamuCenter for Development of Industrial Enterprises in Kazakhstan, (iv) Fostering Competitive Clusters in Uzbekistan and (v) Market Surveillance in Azerbaijan.