REPORT OF THE WORKING GROUP ON TRADE, DEBT AND FINANCE (2018)

TO THE GENERAL COUNCIL

1.1.  The Working Group held two meetings, on 8 June 2018 and 25 October 2018, under the Chairmanship of H.E. Mohammad Haqjo (Afghanistan). At the meeting on 8 June 2018, the Working Group heard and discussed the oral report made by the Director-General on his recent progress regarding the implementation of proposals made in his 2016 document "Trade Finance and SMEs". The Director-General had built a strong coalition of heads of institutions, which altogether worked at increasing support from trade finance facilitation programmes, boost capacity-building, open a dialogue with the Financial Stability Board, and improve trade finance gap detection. After the report by the Director-General and statements by Members, the Chairman concluded that the Director‑General's involvement had received considerable interest and support. Members welcomed his direct interaction with leaders of multilateral development banks and of the Financial Stability Board, and acknowledged progress in the above-mentioned areas. Trade Finance was one area of the WTO work in which the interaction between Members and the Director-General was bearing fruits and results. Several delegations expressed the wish to discuss new methods of financing trade, such as supply chain financing and digital trade, and ways in which Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) could be covered by future discussions on trade finance and proposals. The Chairman proposed to invite in future meetings qualified persons working on achieving progress. The Chairman outlined that Members had a key role to play in this discussion about trade finance. For some countries, there were no or little trade finance gaps. In other countries, this was not the case. Sharing experiences and discussing best practices that would be consistent with the WTO framework would be a good idea. Finally, there had been a demand for hearing, in the fall, about the Director‑General's proposed round table on trade finance at the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings.