Successfully helping developing and transitional economies design and implement effective, pro-poor trade policies.
 
In developing and transitional countries, trade policy can have a profound impact on the domestic economy. Not only can it influence overall growth rates but it can also play a key role at the micro level, impacting on the livelihoods of specific, vulnerable groups. Trade policy can influence sustainable development both directly (through the creation of employment and earnings growth) and indirectly (for example, where the revenue from tariffs forms a key component of government spending on primary healthcare, education and social safety nets). Our assistance in the design, implementation and negotiation of pro-poor trade policies has enabled developing and transition countries to maximise the economic benefits of a rapidly evolving trade environment domestically, regionally and globally. We have also assisted many donor agencies to design trade-related technical assistance and create projects to build sustainable capacity.
 
We have an extensive team of full-time trade specialists, at work on a wide range of trade projects around the world. They are fully supported by our global network of trade experts that includes staff from leading research institutions world-wide, implementing agencies and individual experts from a wide range of trade-related areas.
 

Trade policy capacity building services:
 
Achieving sustainable economic benefits and poverty reduction through enhanced trade policies requires well-functioning domestic, regional and multilateral trade institutions. We are strengthening and increasing the capacity of these institutions around the world by:

		Increasing the ability of domestic institutions to implement policy commitments associated with WTO accession and membership in areas such as: services trade, market access, trade remedies, agricultural domestic support, intellectual property protection, sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) measures, customs valuation, and technical barriers to trade.
		Designing institutional mechanisms to enhance domestic processes for developing trade policies and preparing for trade negotiations.
		Establishing trade policy forums, working groups and committees that encompass government, local academics and private and public sector organisations.
		Designing institutional structures and processes for effectively managing domestic, regional and multilateral trade policy formulation.
		Increasing domestic capability in trade policy analysis and negotiations. Our support includes the development of sophisticated, user-friendly, trade analysis models that are transferred to domestic staff through training.
		Raising public awareness of trade issues through workshops, media events and public consultations.
		Providing long-term support in WTO and regional trade negotiations on a retainer basis.

Trade policy analysis:
 
We have an unsurpassed reputation for providing incisive analytical studies and reviews, on an exhaustive range of technical trade issues, for governments, regional secretariats, and multilateral institutions. Objective quantitative analysis enables us to determine how proposed policy changes will impact on the domestic economy and on specific household and producer groups.
 
Our research and development programme on policy analysis techniques ensures our staff has the latest techniques at their fingertips. These include an unrivalled range of computerised partial-and-general-equilibrium simulation programmes that have been successfully applied worldwide to enhance trade policy design and support trade negotiations. These are used to:

		Quantify the impacts of trade policy at a sectoral level using techniques such as Effective Rate of Protection analysis, and through calculation of Revealed Comparative Advantages and Anti-Export Bias.
		Quantify the global and regional economic impacts of proposed trade agreements using CGE models, particularly the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP).
		Quantify the revenue impacts of trade policy changes and regional integration.
		Analyse the transmission mechanisms between trade policies and poverty.

Using Maxwell Stamp training, many of these packages can be readily transferred to Trade ministries for use in-house beyond the project lifespan.