Afternoon Break-out
session 2
Mentoring System
• Implementation
• Secretariat would call for nominations
• The secretariat would then match up mentors with
receiving members.
• Up to the members to develop the working mentoring
relationship. The secretariats only other role would be if
there were issues that needed resolving and at the
annual review time.
• Timeline for set-up – this would depend on the
secretariats work load.
Mentoring System
• may well be more receiving members than mentoring
members
• should not be restricted to developed members as some
developing members are operating successful NNA’s &
NEP’s.
• possibility of a regional approach which could look at
mentoring a regional organisation that encompasses
several developing members eg: see Kenya.
• mentoring is not about just training it is more about
developing a supportive relationship where receiving
members have a place to go to get advice and possible
solutions on difficulties they maybe having in operating
their NNA & NEP successfully.
Practical procedural manual
• Important to keep it simple with a standard
checklist of processes, previous documents
have been too complicated for members to use
when they are endeavouring to set up their NNA
& NEP’s.
• New Zealand and Australia have undertaken to
complete the manual prior to the next SPS
Committee meeting in Feb 2008.
• On completion it should be available on the
WTO site with the idea that it can be used not
only in its own right but as a template for
members to develop their own specific manual.
Raise awareness
• In dealing with Transparency issues raising awareness in
the political and the public sector is very important.
Convincing the governments of the benefits of SPS
transparency in trade facilitation and getting their long
term commitment to it in terms of resourcing etc is
essential.
• Also raising the awareness of the importance of HS
codes was discussed, an understanding of how this
assists some members was noted. It offers a clear and
precise way to categorize notifications which would
greatly assist members to assimilate the large volume of
notifications.
Revised recommendations on
W/215
• There was not much discussion – two
points for inclusion:
• Importance of HS codes should be noted
in the document
• Facilitation of IMS for online full-text
documents should be explored