Aid for Trade - How Does the WTO Try to Help the Poor?

This paper presents a review of the Aid for Trade program introduced by the World Trade Organization in 2005. Although the volume of international trade has been growing, it is mainly due to the developed countries and some Asian emerging countries. In spite of the favourable market access (lower tariffs), most of the developing nations and the least-developed countries remained losers. As trade can be a tool for the poverty reduction, the Aid for Trade is about to help the developing countries adjust to the new circumstances and become winners of the liberalization process. The paper first introduces the role of international trade and the liberalization process happened so far, then it details the world trade trends. The next section presents the Aid for Trade initiative, and at the end the paper gives an attempt for analysing this program with descriptive statistics