Senior Trade Facilitation Adviser
The International Trade Centre (ITC) has been providing technical assistance and capacity-building (TACB) to implement the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) and trade facilitation reforms through a comprehensive approach, helping countries enhance their customs and border systems to promote smoother, more efficient trade. To date, ITC has supported over 80 countries in 5 continents.
One key area of ITC support is customs and border reforms, building on the TFA provisions, where ITC works with Customs administrations and border regulatory agencies (BRAs) to implement advanced trade facilitation reforms and solutions, including bespoke digital tools. In supporting beneficiary countries to implement the TFA, ITC has engineered and operationalized innovative paperless and digital trade solutions at the national, bilateral and regional level. ITC also supports the establishment or strengthening National Trade Facilitation Committees (NTFCs), which serve as platforms for coordinating the implementation of TFA obligations. An important aspect of ITC's work is incorporating private sector views in trade facilitation reforms. ITC also promotes peer-to-peer learning experiences on trade facilitation, fostering knowledge exchange among countries and across regions. Trade facilitation for regional integration is another focus area of work, where ITC supports the harmonization of trade facilitation reforms as well as border frameworks and practices across borders to promote intra-regional trade. Finally, ITC advocates and promotes inclusive trade facilitation, ensuring that reforms benefit marginalized groups, including women traders and small-scale cross-border traders (SSCBTs).
ITC is delivering its technical assistance on TFA implementation in the context of multi-annual trade-related projects that are being implementing in specific counties and regions. The beneficiary Members and portfolio of services provides is pre-determined under the framework of these country‑specific or regional-specific programmes. Currently ITC is implementing four multi-country, and 8 country-specific TFA related assistance projects for six 6 bilateral donors and two UN agencies.
Brief description of any upcoming assistance and activities
ITC is introducing several new developments in its trade facilitation technical assistance and capacity-building efforts, aimed at addressing modern challenges in global trade. These new developments include integrated risk management, where ITC works with both customs and increasingly with non-customs border agencies to harmonize risk management frameworks and practices, digital trade and transport facilitation reforms along (multi-modal) trade corridors, cross‑border and inter-regional exchanges and interoperability of data, documents and systems, and augmenting trade facilitation services for e-commerce.
Among its digital portfolio of services, ITC is also developing a first-of-its kind Trade and Logistics Performance Dashboard, which helps countries automate the real-time measurement and display of data related to release times at borders, in addition to a wealth of other trade and logistics indicators. Lastly, ITC is seeking to integrate environmental sustainability at borders into its trade facilitation programs – in the form of sensitization, advocacy and new advisory services. This includes encouraging the reduction of carbon footprint at border stations – including through a new methodology developed by ITC – reduction of paper-based documents, improved waste management practices and dedicated policies to align border requirements and practices to circular economy objectives.