With the successful 2014 legislative and presidential elections well in the rearview mirror, Indonesia’s new government can now tackle issues of governance, a key one being effective and efficient policy coordination and consultation. Effective interministerial policy coordination and policy consultation (PCC) can help eliminate policy programs that duplicate actions and regulations. PCC is a necessary element to deal with cross-cutting issues of policy-making in developing countries including Indonesia. Deficient policy coordination and policy consultation decreases a country’s ability to ensure the sustained development of its economy and society, and can handicap its success in reaching beneficial agreements through bilateral and multilateral negotiations.

Inclusion of Aid for Trade in Trade Policy Reviews: Strengthening Value of Development Instruments for LDCs (and developing countries) by Raymond Saner, Lichia Yiu and Mario Filadoro

TPRs can play a central role in mainstreaming trade into national development strategies. TPRs could be used to measure trade capacity gains of countries, a benefit from Aid for Trade (AfT) over time. To do so, it is important that TPRs become standardised in its methodology and reporting and the information pertaining to the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) and other AfT investment be documented in the TPRs.