. /.WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONG/TBT/W/216
30 June 2003
(03-3453)
Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade Original:  English
FOLLOW UP TO THE WORKSHOP ON TBT RELATED TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
PROPOSAL FROM NEW ZEALAND FOR AN INFORMATION
COORDINATION MECHANISM
Submission by New Zealand
1. New Zealand’s accompanying submission on tech nical assistance raises a number of issues
concerning the objective of addressing a perceived information gap on TBT related technical
assistance.  The closure of such a perceived gap may assist in furthering the objective of more
coordination and transparency in the delivery of technical assistance.  This was identified as an
important issue in the Committee’s Workshop on technical assistance held earlier this year.
2. New Zealand has observed that a large quantity of information on assistance activities in the
TBT field is already available.  However the existence of different information formats and different
databases means that WTO Members may be having difficulty in making the best use of the
information sources available in pursuing the objective of more coordinated and transparent delivery
and receipt of assistance.
3. Accordingly, New Zealand would be supportive of Committee efforts to explore ideas on
what the Committee’s role might be in facilitating the better use of information sources.  In particular,
we are attracted to the concept of efforts to assist well-suited donors and recipients to ‘find’ each
other.  This would enable interested parties to explore technical assistance possibilities so that
assistance can be given where it is most needed.  We would hope this objective could be achieved
without duplicating the information and work of other agencies operating in the area of TBT.
4. New Zealand has some experience with a facility called the APEC ECOTECH Clearing
House Mechanism.  Other WTO Members who are APEC Members will also be aware of this facility.
Some of the approaches used in that facility might be of interest to the Committee in further
consideration of its work on technical assistance.
5. The basic concept behind the facility is that it is internet based and provides a platform for
developing countries with particular needs and requests to access donors with suited resources and
capability.  It should be emphasized that the onus remains on donors and recipients to use the system
to ‘find’ each other to explore opportunities, rather  than relying on any third party to physically match
requests and offers.  In other words, it is a user driven mechanism.  This has the benefit of not
requiring a great deal of ongoing resource support from the administrator, but also means that
Members have to take responsibility themselves for notifying information and making the system
work.
6. One benefit of such an approach is that it does not contain a lot of historical data on the
delivery of technical assistance/capacity building, rather it is forward looking and focused only on
what technical assistance is available and needed now.  However, in order to also contribute to the
building of a more coordinated picture of technical assistance activities, such a facility could also link
a number of existing relevant databases, so that WTO members have easy access to informationalready available.G/TBT/W/216
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7. Drawing on the APEC experience, a WTO information coordination mechanism could have
the following features:
• Recipient Members would submit notifications of their technical assistance/capacity building
needs.
• Donor countries/organizations would submit no tifications about their capability to deliver
assistance - experts available and experience in key areas.  Organizations currently operating
their own databases might also be invited to make parallel notifications to the WTO of
assistance opportunities.
• Notifications from donors and recipients could be structured in a way that reflects common
data elements/categories.  For example, the stru cture for the notifications by recipients could
be informed by the work of the Committ ee in identifying needs and priorities.
• Contacts from both donors and recipients would register as ‘users’ of the Clearing House and
set out their key areas of interest – e.g. whether donor or recipient, priority topics, etc.  So,
when a notice was posted that included those key areas of interest the user would be emailed
with a brief message summarizing the posted notice and giving further contact details.  If
interested, the user could then go to the clearinghouse to check the full message.
• Users could then reply directly to the contact who had posted the notice.
• The mechanism would be searchable.
• The Mechanism could also provide internet links to other relevant TBT related databases.
8 As set out, such a facility could provide a simple, effective and practical means to assist in the
matching of supply and demand of technical assistance.  We know such facilities can be set up and beworkable because of the experience of APEC’s Clearing House.  However, technical and other issues
specific to the WTO and its Members would of course need to be considered.
9 As a next step, the Committee may wish to seek more detailed information on the operation of
such a system, including from those systems currently operating in the general area of technicalassistance, eg the APEC ECOTECH Clearing House Mechanism.
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