PRESS RELEASE : WTO General Council – UK statement on International Trade Centre [December 2023]
The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 21 December 2023.
The UK’s Permanent Representative to the WTO and UN in Geneva, Simon Manley, spoke about the ITC at the World Trade Organization General Council (17-19 December 2023).
Item 22: International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO Report of the Joint Advisory Group (JAG) on its 57th Session
The ITC, what a terrific organisation it is. It is an organisation that delivers real impact across the developing world despite some very challenging circumstances – so we congratulate them on this report and the very successful JAG.
As I said at the JAG, we particularly appreciate the way that the ITC brings us close to what actually works for businesses in the developing world, bringing commercial realism to our policy, and turning our policy into commercial reality on the ground. Our own trade partnerships programme, UKTP, with the ITC, helps us in the UK to understand what businesses need in order to take full advantage of our own, more generous, preferences scheme – the developing countries trading scheme. We were pleased to have more than doubled our funding to UKTP this year.
And we are of course extremely proud of the UK-ITC partnership on trade and gender – as I would say as Co-Chair of the informal working group – through the fabulous SheTrades programme. Tackling gender inequality is at the very heart of our views as government on development and on trade, and we are delighted to see that programme progress.
