NETWORKING ON RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS

Considerable trade and investment-related information in electronic format provides opportunities for researchers in the economic development field to become aware of proven strategies, and theoretical and actual innovations. This is not always true for developing countries where costs of information access remain prohibitively high, are restricted by government information policies, the level of infrastructure is low, or only available to a small group of elite in academia and government. The Internet is constantly hailed as a great equalizer in the field of research, but considerable work is required to increase prospects and access of information.

ESCAP, through a United Nations Development Programme regional programme on the exploitation of trade and investment opportunities (RAS/92/35), implemented a pilot project on the network of trade-related research institutions and research outputs in key areas of intra-regional trade. The objective was to stimulate and sustain capacities for intra-regional trade research over the long term. This is being achieved through institutional strengthening, the promotion of collaborative efforts at the country-level by trade research institutions especially in the field of policy research relevant to government and business; and equipping them with methodologies in emerging areas of trade research such as trade and environment, and trade and transparency.

The following actions were undertaken with selected trade-related research institutions:

  1. National seminars were held to increase awareness at the local level, of the advantages to be gained from consolidation of information of previous and ongoing research and the avoidance of costly duplication;

  2. Fellowships were awarded to support policy studies on multilateral trade agreements

  3. Creation of an Internet-based Directory of Trade-Related Research and Data Bases in Selected Asia and Pacific Countries and made available through ESCAP's website, while a hard copy edition is being considered.
These are attempts to increase South-South dialogue for the transfer of knowledge on trade-related research results and databases. While a North - North or North - South flow of information still predominates the research information workplace, the Internet is an ideal platform to generate and sustain interest, and demonstrate the mechanisms in place to decrease the South - South information gap.

Discussions are under way on the optimal approaches to networking of trade-related institutions of ESCAP members and associate members. Further details will be announced, particularly the events planned for 1998, in the What's New section of the webpage.