report (2017) of the committee on trade and development

1  introduction

1.1.  This report covers the work of the Committee on Trade and Development (CTD) in 2017. An overview is provided of the work of the CTD's Regular Session, the Dedicated Session on the Monitoring Mechanism on Special and Differential Treatment, the Dedicated Sessions on Regional Trade Agreements and Small Economies, the CTD's work on Aid for Trade, and the work of the Sub-Committee on Least Developed Countries.^[1]

2  regular session

2.1.  The CTD in Regular Session held four formal meetings on 27 January and 14 March (101^st Session), 17 May (102^nd Session), 21 June (103^rd Session) and 15 November 2017 (104^th Session). The minutes of these meetings are contained in documents WT/COMTD/M/101, WT/COMTD/M/102, WT/COMTD/M/103 and WT/COMTD/M/104^[2], respectively.

2.2.  Members agreed to continue to invite a number of intergovernmental organizations on an ad hoc meeting-by-meeting basis. A full list of intergovernmental organizations with observer status in the Committee is contained in document WT/COMTD/W/22/Rev.8. The CTD continues to have outstanding requests for observer status from the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC), the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) and the Groupe de la Banque Africaine de Développement.

2.3.  At the 102^nd Session, the Committee elected Ambassador Monique Van Daalen (Netherlands) as the Chairperson of the Sub-Committee on Least Developed Countries for 2017. Ambassador Taonga Mushayavanhu (Zimbabwe) was elected Chairman of the CTD.

2.4.  The principal areas addressed by the CTD in Regular Session during the period covered in this report included the following: 

·         technical cooperation and training;

·         market access for developing and least developed countries;

·         report of the Joint Advisory Group on the International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO;

·         trade and development - work in the Committee on the basis of the Chairman's concluding statement from the Eighth Ministerial Conference (MC8);

·         Work Programme on Electronic Commerce;

·         duty-free and quota-free (DFQF) market access for least developed countries (LDCs);

·         participation of developing countries in the multilateral trading system.