India offers capacity building programme to Nepal

New Delhi, Apr.1 (ANI): India has offered a capacity building programme to Nepal.

A group of Nepalese Government officials recently attended an eight-day long tailored-made programme on trade issues conducted by the Centre for WTO Studies and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade under an ITEC programme in collaboration with Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi.

The training was attended by 34 Nepalese officials.

This was a specialized programme on World Trade Organisation (WTO) issues, covering agreements on agriculture, trade-related intellectual property rights, trade remedies agreement such as the anti-dumping agreement, subsidy agreements, safeguard agreements, dispute settlement mechanisms and others.

There are complexities in understanding WTO issues and developing countries have limited resources in understanding the implications of these commitments in the WTO.

Nepal has been a WTO member since 2003.

"We have the challenges related to productive capacities. We have very few sectors and very little diversification. We have not created a sufficient industrial base and we do have gaps in knowledge and understanding, how trade works, how international systems work and training that could help to address," said Hari Odari, a desk officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nepal.

"It is related to WTO. Today, economic issues are crucial to driving international affairs of all countries and most of the developing countries have constraints in products, trade balances, exports and too much of imports. In this type of situation, this kind of training helps us to understand core trade-related issues at the WTO on the one hand and on the other, it helps us to improve our negotiation skills," said Gyanendra Raj Bhandari, an official of the Nepal foreign ministry.

India had assured capacity building assistance to Nepal during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Kathmandu last year.

Professor Anshaul Bhatnagar, programme coordinator, Centre for WTO studies, said that the training module was from March 23 to 31.

The ITEC programme is aimed at developing the capacities of developing countries in understanding various aspects of government work, technical knowledge, WTO, international and a host of other issues.