Today’s announcement of $10 million for TFO Canada’s Canadian Market Access and Capacity Building Services project supports export-led sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries.
This initiative will help develop the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and related trade-support institutions in developing countries to pursue export opportunities in Canada. It will provide smaller exporters with Canadian market information, advice and contact services that will help them grow their businesses and enter the Canadian market. It will also build the capacity of trade-support institutions to enable them to provide Canadian market trade-support services to local exporters (their clients) and help them gain access to the Canadian market and make new export sales.
Key activities associated with the project include:
- producing Canadian Market Information papers and website content, and conducting training, including “Exporting to Canada” seminars, to help trade-support institutions and developing-country exporters improve their access to Canadian markets;
- publishing a monthly e-bulletin for Canadian importers and holding meetings with them to promote developing-country trade missions and events;
- reviewing new exporters/importers accessing the trade information system and assessing new export/import offers;
- conducting market entry studies for SMEs in priority countries; and
- developing a Guide to Using Free Trade Agreements with Canada.
The Canadian Market Access and Capacity Building Services project is a component of the newly established Canadian Trade and Development Facility, which provides trade-related assistance to developing countries. In addition to reaching countries eligible for official development assistance, least-developed countries and many of Canada’s countries of focus, the new initiative specifically targets developing countries with which Canada has negotiated, or is negotiating, free trade agreements in order to help them to benefit from these new agreements.
This initiative will ultimately contribute to job growth and poverty reduction for women and men in developing countries.
Since 1980, TFO Canada has been delivering Canadian market trade information, and advisory and contact services to business and trade-support institutions in a wide range of developing and emerging markets in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
