E-DEVELOPMENT SERVICES THEMATIC GROUP

In collaboration with ITSLC Quickstart

Good Practice in Trade Facilitation - The Role of Information Technology

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

CHAIR

Hamid R. Alavi, Senior Private Sector Development Spec., MNSIF

Hamid Alavi is currently the Regional Trade and Transport Facilitation Coordinator for the MENA Region. In addition to several years of policy advice to client governments, he has substantial operational experience in MENA and other regions, related to private sector development, competitiveness and export development. Some recent work that he has managed include Tunisia export development projects 1 and 2, trade logistics assessments in Syria and Yemen, Trade facilitation work in Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, as well as ICT strategy for Tunisia.

DISCUSSANTS

Carlos Braga, Senior Adviser, PRMTR

Carlos Alberto Primo Braga, a Brazilian national, is currently Senior Adviser, International Trade, The World Bank. Based in Geneva, he is responsible for covering international trade issues of relevance to developing countries vis-à-vis European-based institutions, including the OECD, the European Commission, UNCTAD and the WTO. He acts also as a Senior Adviser of the Vice-President and Chief Information Officer of the World Bank.

Before assuming this position on September 1, 2003, Dr. Braga was the Senior Manager of the Informatics Program at the Information Solutions Group of the World Bank. He was also the director of the Development Gateway initiative -- a web-based initiative for sharing information on development-related topics. Previously,Dr. Braga was the Manager of infoDev (the Information for Development Program), 1997-2001, a multi-donor grant facility administered by the Global Information and Communication Technologies Department, The World Bank. In that capacity, he was responsible for a portfolio of more than 200 innovative projects funded by infoDev grants worldwide. He was also in charge of the Bank's Y2K outreach activities in the period 1998-2000.

Dr. Braga joined the World Bank Group in 1991, as an economist in the International Trade Division of the Bank's International Economics Department. Over the 1991-94 period, he was responsible for research and projects focusing on trade in services, intellectual property rights, regional integration agreements, and trade and the environment. He was the main author of a Board paper on regionalism and, together with UNCTAD staff, prepared Liberalizing International Trade in Services: A Handbook (1994). In 1995, he moved to the Industry & Energy Department as a Senior Economist.

Prior to joining the Bank, Dr. Braga served as a consultant to the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1990. He was a Fulbright Scholar (1988/89) at the Paul Nitze School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University and taught there as a visiting professor over the 1988-98 period. He was an assistant professor at the Faculdade de Economia e Administracao (University of Sao Paulo) and Senior Researcher at the Fundacao Instituto de Pesquisas Economicas, both in Brazil, in the 1980s. He has also been a lecturer on the economics of intellectual property rights at the World Trade Institute, University of Berne, Switzerland.

Dr. Braga received a degree in Mechanical Engineering (1976) from the Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica (Brazil), and an MSc (1980) in Economics from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He holds a PhD (1984) in Economics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Gerald Paul Ollivier, Transport Spec., ECSIE

Gerald Ollivier joined the World Bank in late 1995, and has focused, since 1998, on logistic, trade and transport facilitation in Southeast Europe and in the Caucasus. Relevant experience in Trade and Transport Facilitation includes: TTL of four Trade and Transport Facilitation in Southeast Europe (TTFSE) projects for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Serbia and Montenegro from 1999 to 2003 and Trade Facilitation Coordinator for the facilitation component of this regional program; and TTL for the Trade and Transport Facilitation work in the South Caucasus. He contributes to the World Bank Trade Logistics Group on global initiatives such as the Global Facilitation Partnership for Transportation and Trade (website administrator) and its capacity building efforts in trade facilitation.

Donald Lim-Fat, Director, Information Management Services Ltd.

Donald Lim-Fat directs his own consulting practice and is an electronic trade facilitation consultant with expertise in related areas of customs and port services computerization. Donald also engages in planning and design of e-government systems. He is based in Mauritius where he initiated and led the design and implementation of the TradeNet trade facilitation system back in 1994. Donald also acts as consultant for the trade facilitation component of the Bank’s Tunisian Export Development Projects (EDP I and EDP II). Some of his other recent involvement in trade and logistics systems include Project Management of the implementation of the Navis Container Terminal Management System in Mauritius and specifications for the computerization of the Mauritius Ports Authority.

Donald also engages in strategic planning of ICT at the national level and corporate level. As IT Adviser to the Ministry of Finance in Mauritius in 1994, Donald was responsible for developing the IT strategic plan for the Mauritius Government. He was subsequently involved in setting up several projects of broad national scope in Mauritius, including: (i) clearing, depository and settlement system for the Stock Exchange of Mauritius (ii) automated payment system (RTGS) for the banking sector (iii) Government Audit Office computerization. Donald engages actively in other professional activities and he is President of the Mauritius IT Industry Association as well as board member of the Mauritius Research Council.

Prior to setting up his own consulting business, Donald worked for IBM Laboratory in Toronto, Canada, where he held management responsibility for development of Computer Aided Software Engineering tools for IBM mid-range systems. Donald obtained both his B.Sc. Computer Science (1978) and M.Sc. Computer Science (1980) from the University of Toronto, Canada. He is a certified PMP (Project Management Professional) from the Project Management Institute of Pennsylvania. He holds dual nationalities, Canadian and Mauritian, and is fully bilingual (English and French).