Although apparel, information and technology, wine, home furnishings, and fashion industries in Moldova are stable and capable of growing, they have historically lacked the structured support they need to flourish internationally. The USAID Competitiveness Enhancement and Economic Development (CEED) II project partnered with Moldovan enterprises and the government to support export- and investment-driven growth. Targeting…
From June 2008 to August 2013, the principal objective of the USAID West Bank/Gaza Trade Facilitation Project was to facilitate the flow of goods and people in a manner that satisfied the principles and benchmarks of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access. At the start of the project, TFP focused on three key components,…
The Moldova Business Regulatory, Investment, and Trade Environment (BRITE) program was funded by USAID/Moldova and implemented by Chemonics International in partnership with United States-based small business European Integration Forum. BRITE’s principal task was to demonstrate to Moldovan policymakers that reforms would yield large-scale financial returns in the short and long run, following the theory of…
The United States’ economic future is inextricably linked to Asia. A full quarter of the goods and services exported by the United States are bound for Asia, and about 30 percent of our imports come from the region. In addition, exports to Asia support more than a million American jobs. As such, the United States…
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the biggest regional trade agreement in history. Twelve countries representing nearly 40 percent of the world’s GDP — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam — have agreed on a trade pact that will link their very diverse economies around a set…
Last year was a busy one for international trade and development actors. We observed major progress in the renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, continued global ratification of the World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement, proposal of the Tripartite Free Trade Area in Africa, and announcement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, all of which…
This document aims to help development professionals design trade capacity-building programs that respond to the clear-cut case for equalizing economic conditions for men and women. To assist development professionals in identifying appropriate areas for interventions, this paper gives an overview of the complex issues related to gender and trade, presented in five parts: Setting the…
As a landlocked country of about 3.6 million, nestled between European Union (EU)-member Romania and Ukraine, Moldova has struggled economically. Since gaining its independence in 1991, Moldova’s gross domestic product (GDP) has actually declined from Soviet-era levels. Part of the reason is that the government has hampered Moldovan export sales with prohibitive customs requirements that…
USAID’s Nepal Economic, Agriculture, and Trade (NEAT) Activity aimed to build capacities within Nepal’s number one industry — agriculture — to reduce poverty and food insecurity, facilitate important regulatory and ad- ministrative reforms to increase revenue generation and trade, improve access to finance, and attract investment. The project also aimed to address deficiencies in the…