International Trade Centre

International Trade Centre

International Trade Centre
Abbreviation	ITC CCI
Formation	1964
Type	Subsidiary organization
Legal status	Active
Headquarters	Geneva, Switzerland
Head	Arancha Gonzalez
Parent organization	World Trade Organization, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
Website	http://www.intracen.org/

The International Trade Centre (ITC) (French: Centre du commerce international (CCI)) is a subsidiary organization of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and provides trade-related technical assistance. Whereas the WTO mainly deals with the rules of international trade and UNCTAD with research and advocacy, ITC's mandate is far more narrow as it is solely concerned with helping (so-called) developing and transition economies to promote their exports. The pure focus on technical assistance is rare within the UN system as most other organizations that provide technical assistance usually engage in multiple areas and kinds of assistance.

ITC has its headquarters in Geneva and one field office in Mexico City.

ITC is the successor of the International Trade Information Centre, which the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established in 1964 “for the purpose of assisting the export promotion efforts of the developing countries” by providing them “with information on export markets and marketing, and to help them develop their export promotion services and train the personnel needed for these services.” In an effort to streamline the United Nation's export promotion efforts, an agreement was reached between the GATT, which at that time and in contrast to its successor, the WTO, was part of the United Nations system, and the newly established UNCTAD, to merge the activities of the two organizations by creating a joint subsidiary. The agreement was reached in 1967 and the International Trade Centre (the explicit reference to "information" was dropped) was officially established on 1 January 1968.

ITC's service offering is nowhere described in a systematical way. Thus, the following description necessarily contains inaccuracies. ITC offers numerous different services to its beneficiaries. In doing so it differentiates between three groups of target beneficiaries: Policymakers trade-support institutions, and enterprises. Some services are specifically designed for one of these groups while others have a universal character. In principle, there is no predefined list of services that ITC is limited to: Services are being developed depending on requests of beneficiary countries or donors.