WASHINGTON, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Private sector can play a more important role in helping build trade capacity for developing countries, said Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Robert Zoellick, the World Bank President, on Monday.

"Business should be more creative" to help developing countries upgrade trade capacity, Lamy said at a panel discussion with Zoellick at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington D.C..

He said the private sector and government organizations need closer cooperation to push the agenda when they examine the role of the WTO and the World Bank in "The Aid for Trade" initiative, a program established in 2005.

However, "we do not have yet brilliant answers," Lamy added.

Echoing Lamy's remarks, Zoellick stressed the need to forge new partnerships between government organizations and the private sector.

He noted that when talking about to increase the growth opportunity for developing countries, "the trade is not only important in the traditional way we might have studied in the textbooks, but increasingly in supply chain and logistics system."

He said that the World Bank will try to help improve the overall competitiveness in the developing countries, help those countries cut cost of trade, and provide financial assistance.

"The Aid for Trade" is a multilateral initiative to assist developing countries, especially low-income countries, integrate into the world economy as a way to spur growth. Launched formally in 2005 at the Hong Kong Ministerial of the WTO, the initiative was designed to help developing countries take advantage of market openings by overcoming obstacles hampering trade -- poor infrastructure, trade-stifling regulations, and policy disincentives -- as well as finance domestic adjustment to any new liberalization.

March 14^th, 2011

Source: Xinhua News

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