WTO report highlights strong level of technical assistance despite resource constraints

The 2025 Annual Report on Technical Assistance published by the WTO Secretariat on 27 May highlights that despite budgetary constraints, over 13,000 government officials from developing and least-developed WTO members and observers benefited from capacity-building activities in 2025. The report finds that 80 per cent of performance targets were fully or partially met, representing an increase from the ten-year 73 per cent average. Technical assistance activities were made available to 140 WTO members and observers, with Africa and Asia-Pacific remaining the two regions with the highest participation rates.

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• Technical assistance
• Trade and development

Despite the high level of activity, the number of government officials trained via WTO technical assistance in 2025 represents a 31 per cent decline compared with 2024. Least-developed country nationals accounted for 29 per cent of beneficiaries. Women's participation increased to 49 per cent, two percentage points higher than in 2024.

The report also underlines the difficulties of maintaining a high level of WTO technical assistance due to ongoing budgetary constraints. Unearmarked voluntary contributions to the WTO's Global Trust Fund - funding that is not tied to specific programmes and can be allocated according to members' priorities - remained below CHF 3 million for the second consecutive year. Although the number of donors to the Fund increased for the first time in a decade, overall funding remained at its lowest level in 25 years.

In response to budgetary constraints, the WTO Secretariat accelerated the shift towards virtual and blended delivery - combining in-person and virtual activities. Excluding e-Learning, 65 per cent of technical assistance activities in 2025 combined face-to-face, virtual and self-paced learning elements, 16 per cent were fully virtual and 19 per cent were delivered face-to-face.

"2025 was a year of profound transformation during which the entire WTO technical assistance business model had to be reconsidered and reengineered", WTO Deputy Director-General Xiangchen Zhang notes in the report's foreword.� Given the challenging circumstances, the stability of results "shows how resilient many of the technical assistance results can be in adverse circumstances", he said.

The report highlights three particular areas of focus in 2025:

• tailored assistance supported recently acceded members, with Comoros receiving assistance on implementing the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement and Timor-Leste benefiting from activities aimed at assisting its accession to the Agreement on Government Procurement
• the WTO scaled up blended technical assistance as a way to preserve quality and outreach under tight resources
• the Trade in Services for Development initiative developed and tested new diagnostic and analytical tools to help members identify policy options for leveraging services trade for development.

Support for members' transparency obligations also remained a priority. Action-oriented technical assistance - combining advanced training, coaching, action plans and follow-up - expanded sharply during the year and contributed to further progress in addressing notification backlogs.

The year was also marked by a stronger emphasis on partnerships and practical, fit-for-purpose support, including cooperation with partners such as the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie.

The full report can be accessed here.

Background

A core function of the WTO, technical assistance and capacity-building activities aim to enhance professional and institutional trade capacities in developing and least-developed WTO members and observers. These activities equip beneficiaries with the know-how to take full advantage of the opportunities arising from the rules-based multilateral trading system, and to address related challenges. Within the WTO Secretariat, the Institute for Training and Technical Cooperation oversees these activities.

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