International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO (ITC)

The International Trade Centre (‘ITC’) was established on the basis of a decision of the Contracting Parties to the GATT adopted on 19 March 1964 within the framework of the Programme for Expansion of International Trade which had been launched some years earlier. According to the 2006 WTO Final Report on the Strategic Review of the WTO TRTA Activities, based on the evaluation of the ITC's activities between 2003 and 2005 carried out by a private consortium, the ITC had a strong comparative advantage in trade development, in contrast to the strength of its parent organizations, the WTO and UNCTAD, which concentrate on trade policy and regulation. The Final Report however urged for more systematic needs assessments and a measurement of products' costs in terms of real utilization by recipients, as well as a stronger drive to update them according to changing needs. The ITC was found handicapped by its lack of multiyear funding and the frequent lags in the reception of funds promised by external donors. In addition, the size of the ITC was too large to continue providing merely generic or global assistance and only very limited region- and country-specific projects. The WTO Final Report therefore recommended the ITC either to downsize and improve the efficiency of its current task, or to enlarge its activities creating more recipient-specific business assistance.