The Future of Aid for Trade at the WTO meeting was held during the ICTSD Trade and Development Symposium in Bali, coinciding with the ninth WTO Ministerial Conference in Bali 3-6 December 2013. It was organised by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in partnership with the Commonwealth Secretariat and South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE) to discuss the Future of Aid for Trade at the WTO.

The meeting brought together the Asian Development Bank, the Commonwealth Secretariat, ODI and (SAWTEE) and TPU (UK DFID/BIS). It was moderated by Dr Dirk Willem te Velde, head of the International Economic Development Group at ODI. He introduced the session by highlighting that Aid for Trade under the paragraph 57 of the Hong-Kong declaration had been successful, but that it now had to continue to evolve in a rapidly changing trade and finance landscape. How can the Aid for Trade initiative be reinvigorated so that it responds to the changes in a way that strengthens the WTO in years to come? How can Aid for Trade continue to support Less Developed Countries (LDCs) and be an effective tool for developing value chains? Suppose we were to write a new paragraph 57, what would be included?