Distinguished Delegates,
It is a great pleasure
for me to address you on the occasion
of this joint session between the Committee
for Trade, Industry and Enterprise Development
and the Centre for Trade Facilitation
and Electronic Business.
In the secretariat, we
welcome and appreciate this joint session
initiative as part of the Committee's
efforts to look at the structure of its
meetings and to experiment with new ways
to improve effectiveness, to encourage
the sharing of information and to stimulate
cross-sectoral thinking.
In the outcome of last
year's International Conference on Financing
for Development, considerable emphasis
was placed on the importance of international
trade as an engine for development and
a major contributor to poverty reduction.
The UNECE therefore sees an important
role for trade and the work of your Committee
in preventing the development of new economic
divides within the region and in promoting
overall development and growth in the
region.
To support work in this
area, the secretariat has prepared a paper
on "The regional impact of the development
dimension of the multilateral trade negotiations
in the WTO", as a part of the Secretary-General's
Regional Cooperation Report, which explains
how these negotiations will affect the
future prospects for trade development
in the UNECE region and, especially, for
the least advantaged countries. This paper
will be discussed by ECOSOC at its July
2003 session in Geneva, ECOSOC being the
highest level in the United Nations for
discussing economic and social issues.
I appreciate the seriousness
with which the Committee and its Bureau
have addressed the issues raised during
the last year in the context of efforts
to strengthen the United Nations and to
make it both more efficient and effective.
As part of the latest step in this process,
at its March 2003 session, the UNECE discussed
and I assume will agree in June on Action
2 to encourage its Principal Subsidiary
Bodies to review their structures on an
annual basis. It is my understanding that
your Bureau has already initiated an in-depth
review of the Committee's structures and
I would like to encourage you in this
work. In particular, you should take the
opportunity to look at your priorities
and to reflect on new developments and
how these could be incorporated into your
programme of work, but within existing
resources. As one example, you may want
to look at the issue of the knowledge
economy and whether or not it would be
appropriate for the CTIED to take a lead
in this area and, if so, the inter-governmental
structures that would be required for
us to do so.
As you know, one of the
Commission's objectives is also to encourage
more cross-sectoral work and, in this
context, I would like to congratulate
you on the in-depth examination of common
areas of interest between your Committee
and the Inland Transport Committee that
will be discussed later in this session.
These discussions should result in even
more concrete opportunities for cooperation
between your two Committees in the future.
As one example, the Working Party on Customs
Questions affecting Transport might set
up a joint transport and trade team of
specialists in support of the TIR Convention
that will include experts in trade facilitation,
transport, Customs and insurance issues
and we hope that the Committee and UN/CEFACT
will be able to contribute fully to that
team.
In another cross-sectoral
area, namely trade and environment, I
also appreciate the fact that work has
progressed during the past year, especially
in the areas of certification and conformity
assessment. At the same time the World
Summit on Sustainable Development agreed
in its Plan of Implementation upon an
increased role of the regional commissions
in the implementation of Sustainable Development.
It is indispensable to integrate the three
dimensions of Sustainable Development
into the programmes of work of all subprogrammes
including Trade. I would therefore like
to encourage you to further discuss how
best to integrate the remaining two dimensions
(environmental and social) into the work
of the CTIED.
The Committee has also
made an important contribution during
the last year to the discussions on a
wider Europe and how to create new policy
dialogues while at the same time preventing
the development of new barriers and divides
in the region.
The workshop, "Trade,
Business and Investment in a Wider Europe",
which was organized on 7 April, highlighted
some of the very important contributions
that the Committee makes toward the accomplishment
of these goals, namely in the area of
reducing non-tariff barriers to trade
through the development and promotion
of regional and international standards,
instruments for regulatory convergence,
and trade facilitation.
I invite you to build
upon this work and consider how you could
support the non-accession countries to
promote their economic integration among
themselves and with the EU enlarged through
free-trade arrangements. In particular,
there is a need to support these countries
by developing advisory capacities in close
cooperation with UNCTAD and the ITC.
Given the development
in trading relationships between newly
acceded EU countries and non-acceding
neighbours that will need to take place
after 2004, the reduction of non-tariff
barriers to trade and, therefore, your
work, should have a prominent place in
any policies aimed at maintaining and
improving the economic well-being of the
region.
Standardization fosters
and permits governments and private actors
to harmonize their actions in the economic
sphere in order to achieve common objectives
at a national, regional or international
level. The work undertaken by the Committee
makes a significant contribution to standardization
in a number of important trade-related
areas such as trade facilitation, e-business
and agricultural quality standards.
During the last year
we have seen an increasing interest in
some of the traditional UNECE trade facilitation
standards, such as the United Nations
Layout Key and the UN Code for Trade and
Transport Locations, known as UN/LOCODE.
In the latter case, we have seen an increase
in the demand for additions and changes
to the UN/LOCODE from approximately 5000
requests in 2001 to 10,000 in 2002, with
another 20% increase projected for 2003.
In addition, the UNECE
has been very pleased to continue making
a significant contribution to the international
work on e-business standards through its
maintenance of UN/EDIFACT, which forms
the background of many large automated
systems, particularly in the governmental
arena; its work on ebXML; and the development
of other technology independent standards
such as the Universal Modelling Methodology
(UMM).
The UNECE believes that,
through UN/CEFACT, it provides an appropriate
environment for the development of new
e-business standards, which is open and
has free public access. It also fosters
cooperation and joint work between Governments
and the private sector -- an essential
element for the development of standards
used in trade and an area where continuity
is important. Thus, through your work,
the United Nations is able to create a
public good that is important for all
our member States, and especially those
that are at risk of being left on the
"other side" of the digital divide.
In addition, we in the
secretariat believe that UN/CEFACT has
an important role to play in the implementation
of trade facilitation in a world where
decreasing tariffs result in increased
non-tariff barriers to trade and at the
same time security concerns result in
great pressure for more controls and procedures.
As the oldest and one of the most respected
forums for trade facilitation work and
as a recognised interlocutor in this area
for the World Trade Organization as well
as for the World Customs Organization,
we in the secretariat believe that the
UNECE and UN/CEFACT can make a real difference.
However, in order for this potential to
be realized, it is important both to give
adequate priority to trade facilitation
work and to place the emphasis on results.
We must also ensure that trade facilitation
concepts are incorporated into e-business
tools and standards from their very inception
in order to ensure their effectiveness
and usefulness in regional and international
trade.
This week the UN/CEFACT
Plenary has begun discussions on the best
approaches for funding and continuing
their work, particularly in e-business
standards. In this context, we were very
pleased, last Friday, to receive the response
from the Office of Legal Affairs in New
York to the questions being posed by UN/CEFACT
and its Steering Group. Many of these
questions create new precedents in the
United Nations environment and, in this
light, the Office of Legal Affairs has
had to examine them carefully. However,
we are now confident that their response
can serve as a road map for the future.
Indeed, we hope that these discussions,
and the resulting decisions, will result
in an even more dynamic and results oriented
UN/CEFACT.
Moving on to other standards
developed under the Committee, the work
on agricultural quality standards continues
to expand, in response to requests from
users, in order to include not just new
products, but also a review of the existing
standards to better understand their impact
on the growers of organic produce and
the codification of fresh produce, in
order to enable the electronic exchange
of information for trade in these products.
Many of the Committee's standards form
the basis for binding regulatory measures,
particularly in the areas of trade facilitation
and agricultural quality standards.
In the domain of technical
regulations the Committee has also made
a significant contribution to regional
harmonization through Working Party 6
and its Model for International Regulatory
Harmonization, as well as the various
pilot implementations that it is developing.
In the area of industrial
restructuring and enterprise development,
there have also been a number of interesting
and exciting developments during the last
year.
In particular, in August
2002, as a contribution to the implementation
of the Millennium Development Goals, a
first Regional Forum on Youth:
Opportunity, Security and Prosperity
was organized. The Forum was well attended
by representatives from Governments, the
business community and youth organizations.
It developed recommendations to a number
of international organizations dealing
with the issues of youth entrepreneurship
and employment. As a follow-up, the UNECE
is now organizing, in collaboration with
several international organizations including
UNDESA, UNICEF, ILO, UNAIDS and UNDP,
a sub-regional (CIS) Forum on Youth, scheduled
to be held in Kiev in September 2003.
The Second Forum on Women's Entrepreneurship
held in Geneva in March 2003 focused on
two important areas: financing women's
entrepreneurship and ICT, and represented
a step forward in promoting women's entrepreneurship,
networking women entrepreneurs, etc.
The restructuring of
old industries in transition economies
was discussed recently in the Workshop
on Policy and Regulatory Options for Promoting
Industrial Restructuring. The progress
in knowledge-based economy and IS in the
UNECE region is monitored in reports on
knowledge-based economy, which will be
available for all transition economies
or newly emerging market economies in
the region.
I would also like to
congratulate Working Party 8 on its decision
to undertake an in-depth assessment of
its programme of work in order to identify
and prioritize programme elements on the
basis of the benefits that they provide
to member States, and to increase policy
dialogue at its meetings through a new
round table.
In international legal
and commercial practices, Working Party
5 has continued to provide demand-driven
technical advisory services to countries
in transition and, through its capacity
building work in the legal and institutional
field, is contributing directly to the
implementation of the United Nations development
goals. Since the last session, the Intellectual
Property Advisory Group, the Public-Private
Partnership Alliance and the Land for
Development programmes have held consultative
meetings, training, seminars and conferences
in ten transition economies.
To highlight just one
of these, the Real Estate Advisory Group's
Land for Development Programme was successfully
launched in Rome in September 2002, and
has received major support from the Government
of the United Kingdom. This support will
finance five study tours in the region
that will allow governments to learn from
the Russian experience with several ongoing
projects to help poor rural workers turn
their newly acquired land rights into
revenue generating assets. The LFPD will
hold its second Summit in Rome later this
year on "Land for Security" in post conflict
reconstruction, with the World Bank, UN
Habitat, and the EBRD, as well as with
NGOs such as the Royal Institute for Chartered
Surveyors.
The next session of WP
5 will take place in Geneva on 17-19 November
2003, and will discuss its two new guidelines
for improving governance in SMEs and for
competitive tendering in public- private
partnerships. In this context, when you
are discussing the Committee's programme
of work, I like you to consider to what
extent the CTIED should take on work related
to the very important issues of corporate
governance and corporate responsibility
either under WP 8 or WP 5.
In conclusion:
The Committee for Trade,
Industry and Enterprise Development has
an important role to play in the integration
of all UNECE member States, and especially
those with transition economies, into
the global and world economy and also
in the accomplishment of the United Nations
Millennium Declaration goals. The norms,
standards and recommendations coming out
of the Committee form a valuable contribution
to the economic integration and growth
throughout the entire region. I am sure
that the CTIED will continue to play this
role. Finally I would like to wish the
joint session of CTIED and UN/CEFACT success
in your deliberations.
Thank you for your attention.
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