Trade monitoring

Nepal is a mountainous and predominantly agrarian land-locked country of 26.6 million people lying in the southern slopes of the Himalayas, bordering the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China in the north and India in the south, east and west. The hilly and the mountainous regions including the great Himalayan range that has eight of the 14 highest peaks in the world above 8,000 meters account for 83% of the total land area of 147,181 sq. km. and the terai plain accounts for 17% of the area. Within its very small stretch, Nepal possesses immense ethnic, cultural, climatic and biological diversities.

The Committee on Trade and Development adopted the 2016-2017 Aid for Trade work programme on promoting connectivity. Disbursements of Aid for Trade reached US$ 39.8 billion in 2015, the highest amount for a single year. The WTO and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development launched the 2016 Aid for Trade monitoring and evaluation exercise, which aims to review Aid for Trade priorities in advance of the Global Review of Aid for Trade, to be held at the WTO on 11-13 July 2017.

This second joint review of Guinea and Mauritania, the fourth for Guinea and the third for Mauritania, has enabled us to assess the changes in their trade policies and practices, and the effects thereof on their economies since 2011. Our discussions have benefited from the participation of H.E. Ms Naha Mint Hamdi Ould Mouknass, Minister for Trade, Industry and Tourism and head of the delegation of Mauritania, and Ms Fanta Cisse, Secretary General of the Ministry of Trade and head of the delegation of Guinea. I am also grateful to H.E. Mr Alberto Sanz for his contribution as the discussant, and to the Members for their commitment to this review.