ISLAMABAD - Ministry of Commerce (MoC) in collaboration with USAID Pakistan arranged a sophisticated training to develop the capacity of the Ministry officials in terms of learning best practices when negotiating treaties, trade access and trade policy.
By identifying legal and capacity constraints the training is the first of its kind for senior government officials. The 6 month training of 61 officials resulted in a cadre of highly trained government leadership which is at par with leading global official’s expertise in both trade and commerce.
At the debrief session where participant received training completion certificates, Ministry officials said they have come out of the training with an astute understanding of the latest negotiation tactics and a more holistic understanding of trade laws. Speaking at the session, Chief Guest of the event Secretary Ministry of Commerce, Muhammad Shahzad Arbab said that the Ministry has been able to develop technical ability and knowledge base in terms of negotiating and analytical expertise, given the structure of Civil Service in Pakistan, the Ministry of Commerce has deemed it necessary to augment and equip its human resource through training with the required skill sets.
The Ministry of Commerce training had three broad pillars to the intervention: Technical assistance to Ministry of Commerce in the form of economic research; Training, including workshops and lecture-based programmes with mechanisms for trainees and MoC management to evaluate teaching methodology, and lastly on-the-job training which included focused hands-on work with staff to analyze and report on specific documents.
The training was organised through USAID Training for Pakistan, a $33.9 million four-year project which aims to provide training and exchange programmes to more than 6,000 Pakistanis before May 2017.