National Trade Facilitation Committees as Coordinators of Trade Facilitation Reforms

Abstract

National Trade Facilitation Committees (NTFCs) have been transformed from being largely unknown institutional bodies to leading governments’ trade facilitation efforts and policy agendas for cross border trade. Yet so much remains to be done to adequately position these committees as the drivers of trade facilitation measures and harness their multistakeholder potential for trade facilitation reforms. Various Trade Facilitation Bodies had been formed since the 1970s, but it was not until the negotiations and entry into force of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) that common challenges of institutional setups for trade efforts in many countries became apparent. This created urgency for the strengthening of NTFCs across the world as leading coordination mechanism for coherent and all-inclusive trade facilitation policy reforms. UNCTAD has been an implementing partner of many countries on trade facilitation measures over the years. This study updates, builds and expands upon previous UNCTAD studies.