The French session of the WTO Advanced Course for Chairs of National Committees on Trade Facilitation (NCTFs) was held from 30 January to 10 February 2017 at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland. The course benefitted over 23 government officials from 20 French-Speaking countries and from the secretariat of the Central Africa Monetary and Economic Community.

The course aimed to enhance the knowledge of Chairs of NCTFs on the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement as well as build their capacities to effectively engage with their stakeholders and the donor community. The course was largely based on the WCO capacity-building material on Stakeholder Consultations and Resource Mobilization.

This course also enabled the participants to familiarize themselves with institutional partners’ programmes, tools and instruments that support the implementation of the WTO TFA. At this occasion, the WCO was given the opportunity to present its Mercator Programme and raise awareness about, among others, the Revised Kyoto Convention, the SAFE Framework of Standards and the Time-Release Study guide.

By the end of the course, the participants were able to develop result-oriented and measurable action plans to establish and/or enhance the performance of their NCTFs.

The WTO invited the WCO to co-facilitate this workshop in partnership with the World Bank Group, World Economic Forum, UNECE, UNCTAD, ITC and IATA. The WCO is pleased to report that the cooperation between the agencies was excellent and conducive to achieving the workshop’s objectives, hence demonstrating that a coordinated approach to supporting Members with their efforts to implement the WTO TFA was the most efficient one.

The WCO had partnered with the WTO to deliver the first session of the course for English speaking countries at the end of 2016 and has since been invited by the WTO to co-facilitate the same course for Spanish-speaking countries scheduled to take place at the end of March 2017.

For more information about this activity, please contact: facilitation@wcoomd.org or capacity.building@wcoomd.org.