ITC - International Trade Centre UNCTAD-WTO Market Access Consultant on identification, collection and classification of market requirements in the southern Mediterranean region, Geneva

Project Title: Euro-med trade and investment facilitation mechanism – An
online tool and problem solving network (TIFM)

Project Number: INT/75/36A

Assignment title: Market Access
Consultant on identification, collection and classification of market
requirements in the southern Mediterranean region

Contract duration (including start/end
date): ASAP for 6 months (120 working days)

Duty station: ITC-HQ

Travel: Yes

Background

The International Trade Centre (ITC) is
a joint agency of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization for
trade-related technical cooperation in developing countries.

The TIFIM project aims to

contribute to
greater trade in the Euro-Mediterranean region by helping SME’s to take better
informed trade decisions when doing international business. It will address the
problem of the lack of trade information transparency in the Euro-Med region
and thereby promote greater intra-regional trade and investment. The countries
targeted by the project include: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon,
Morocco, State of Palestine, Tunisia and possibly Turkey in an additional
phase.

The project will contribute to trade
information transparency by providing an online portal for use by economic
operators, with information on customs tariffs, market regulations and
standards, trade flows, responsible institutions and other content that
facilitates trade related decisions of economic operators. Information on
market requirements will need to be collected and catalogued. ITC will
coordinate this data collection effort via national focal points, who will
liaise with relevant institutions in their countries. ITC will check, clean and
catalogue the data for uploading to the tool. The project will also create a
problem solving network of focal points from various trade support institutions
that would use this tool to actively promote trade and investment (through an
enquiry response facility) between the above mentioned Mediterranean countries
and the EU.

In this framework, ITC seeks an
international consultant for collecting and cataloguing data on market
requirements and rules of origin of preferential trade agreements. As many of
the market requirements and rules of origin are written is in French or Arabic,
the consultant must be proficient in both languages as well as have an advanced
command of English, in order to classify the regulations according to the
international nomenclature on non-tariff measures.

Duties

The international consultant will work
under the direct guidance of a Market Analyst and the overall supervision of a
Senior Market Analyst responsible for the TIFM project. She/he will collect
process and analyse data on market requirements and rules of origin.

The international consultant will
perform the following activities and ensure the corresponding outputs:

Activity 1: Classification of Rules of
Origin (RoO) of Preferential Trade Agreements collected in the 8 southern
Mediterranean countries. The consultant will classify the RoO that have been
collected for the region.

Output of Activity 1: Excel table
providing the most detailed information such as ‘identified products’ and
‘identified countries’.

Activity 2: Non-tariff measures data
classification

The consultant will classify the
non-tariff compulsory regulations (hereafter referred to as NTMs) applied by
southern Mediterranean countries based on an internationally recognised
nomenclature for NTMs.

NTM sources include, but are not
limited to, the relevant national government agencies contacts, government
websites, official journals and other related documentation.

NTM chapters include:

Sanitary
and phytosanitary measures (SPS);
Technical
barriers to trade (TBT);
Pre-shipment
inspection and other formalities;
Price
control measures;
Licenses,
quotas and other quantity control measures;
Charges,
taxes and other para-tariff measures;
Finance
measures;
Anticompetitive
measures;
Trade
related investment measures;
Export
related measures.
Environmental
requirements
MFN
and preferential taxes
Trade
agreements, rules and certificates of origin
Contingent
trade protective measures

The data classification will follow
ITC’s pre-defined structure that one data entry corresponds to:

One
identified NTM code
One
product code affected by a measure. Product codes should be classified
under the harmonized system nomenclature (HS) as defined in the official
source document. If the official source document does not provide the
product code, the consultant will provide description of the product and
HS code at HS 6-digit level;
One
affected country or group of country (in the majority of the cases, this
will be the group ‘World’).

Output of Activity 2: Excel table
providing the most detailed information as per the above described process.

Payment schedule

After every 20 days of work upon
satisfactory progress of duties.

Qualifications, Competencies and
experience required

Advanced
degree in economics, international law, international relations,
statistics or related field.
Six
months or more of related professional experience.
Strong
proficiency in MS Office applications, especially Excel.
Knowledge
on market requirements and rules of origin is an asset
Knowledge
of other data programming tools such as SAS and Stata is an asset
Ability
to work independently, with flexibility and deliver results under time
pressure.