WHILE speaking at the closing ceremony of the Third Global Review of Aid for Trade yesterday, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy hailed the two-day deliberations as highly encouraging and put stress on improved accountability and transparency.

He stated that the WTO's initiative has emerged stronger from this Review, and more robust for embracing accountability. It is stronger for the results WTO has been able to showcase, but also for the candour with which the shortcomings of current approaches and practices have been debated; both with regard to the allocation and implementation of Aid for Trade.

Mr Lamy recalled that in 2009, the world came together at the height of economic crisis. Nowhere was this crisis more evident than in the collapsing market for trade finance. The WTO launched the Global Trade Liquidity Programme. That programme has now disbursed $1.8 billion in funding but the world trade is not out of the woods yet. While liquidity has returned to the markets, longer term structural issues have become more apparent. Access is now the challenge, not availability, particularly in Africa, he added.