(NNT)Developing a global partnership for development is the last target in the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is the last installment in a series of special reports dealing with eight MDGs. This last episode discusses ways on how to increase assistance for development of developing countries, especially impoverished ones.
Assistance can be made in forms of supporting budget to build more public utilities and extend public services for people as well as opening more markets for goods from developing nations following the ‘Aid for Trade’, which has been accepted as one of the policies to promote international trade of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Thailand has turned itself from being a receiver of assistance to a benefactor although it has not made a pledge with the general assembly of the WTO in 2005 to provide assistance to other countries under the Aid for Trade policy. Thailand has formulated a national agenda to help its neighbors by emphasizing on creating regional cooperation.
Most of the countries that Thailand has been assisting are in the Mekong sub-region, including Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam under collaboration of many units such as the Thailand International Development Cooperation Agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Economic and Social Development Board and the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives.
The International Institute for Trade and Development (ITD) is also one of the organizations providing assistance to neighboring nations. The ITD has been arranging trainings and researches related with international trade policies and other trade measures under the WTO framework for representatives from the Mekong Region.
It is hoped that the aforementioned assistance will help uplift development of neighboring countries to the same level as other nations in the region for sustainable development. While richer nations are helping underprivileged ones, recipient countries should also try hard in improving themselves and trying to achieve the prescribed goals, not for anyone else, but for the betterment of their own nations and citizens who are paying taxes for efficient national administration.
