DG Azevêdo congratulated the Prime Minister on Cambodia’s leadership in placing the issues of least-developed countries (LDCs) at the centre of WTO discussions.

DG Azevêdo said:

“It is my great pleasure to welcome Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia to the WTO. During these challenging times for the multilateral trading system, we must redouble our efforts to support least-developed countries to benefit from trade. I am committed to working with Cambodia and other LDCs to stand up for their interests in the trade debate and to ensure that the trading system serves them. We must continue working together to this end. Providing capacity building support to help countries like Cambodia develop their trading capacity is one very important aspect of this. We will continue delivering that support with our Aid for Trade work, including through excellent initiatives like the Enhanced Integrated Framework.”

Cambodia held the position of coordinator of the LDC Group at the WTO in 2017, and led the Group at the 11th WTO Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires. In recent years Cambodia has received support from the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) to develop its National Trade Integration Strategy. The EIF provided investment of US$ 5.7 million to the Cambodia Export Diversification and Expansion Programme, supporting a range of economic sectors and delivering significant results. For example, this investment contributed to the tripling of Cambodian rice exports between 2011 and 2015.

The EIF is a multilateral partnership dedicated to assisting LDCs to use trade to support growth, sustainable development and poverty reduction. The EIF is headquartered at the WTO in Geneva, and the WTO is one of the Framework's key partner agencies.
 

Source: wto.org