UNCTAD high-level officials met the COMPAL donor in order to brainstorm the future of the COMPAL programme. This meeting took place in Bern at SECO premises on 25 June 2007.

The mission had the following parts according to the timetable provided. First, the opening remarks by Mr. Egler (SECO) and Ms. Puri (UNCTAD) were delivered. Second, Mr. Qaqaya provided valuable comments on  the COMPAL’s success and the forthcoming IGE session on technical cooperation dedicated to COMPAL. He also mentioned that the impact of the Programme was primarily due to the way it has been implemented and the lessons learnt which were replicated to other developing countries.Third, a brief Power Point presentation was delivered by Mrs. Alvarez which contained the following main points: (i) an overview of results of COMPAL I, based on a self-assessment and diagnosis of the Programme and primary information received by the national coordinators (copies of the reports available); (ii) Imagining COMPAL II: goals, strategy, mode of delivery and proposals for strengthening the management of COMPAL.; and (iii) the way forward.

After, a general and lively discussion with key participants of the COMPAL Programme took place. In this regard, Mr. Qaqaya referred to the fact of expanding COMPAL best practices in the form of an advisory team. In addition, Mrs. Puri put forward the idea that with minimum additional resources, COMPAL can be expanded easily, because of the multiplier effect created during COMPAL I. Taking in consideration that there are resource – intensive regional additional projects that should be addressed by UNCTAD, COMPAL may served as a useful to platform to implement them. Mrs. Alvarez endorsed what was said by Mr. Qaqaya and Mrs. Puri.

An important input for the meeting was the one suggested by Mr. Evenett. He mentioned five lessons as regards the implementation of COMPAL up to the present. The first lesson is that there are indeed good results in the Programme, devoted mainly to the day-to-day overall supervision of the Programme and the responsiveness of national coordinators. The second lesson referred to the idea that a need assessment phase may not be a useful idea as the circumstances change faster and quite often. Hence, if COMPAL is to be renewed for the future, local and regional circumstances may play a pivotal role in shaping the programme as they should be dynamic enough to react against any change in plans and context. The third lesson mentioned was the slight difference of culture between UNCTAD and SECO as regards their institutional objectives and standards of accountability. This difference should be tackled in the future. The four lesson was in relation to the administrative burden for COMPAL which apparently has been a problem during COMPAL I. To this end, it should be noted that the Programme Management Committee in Geneva is taking some measures regarding this problem during 2007. As for the fifth lesson, Mr. Evenett emphasized on the fact of avoiding duplicity of efforts between COMPAL and other technical assistance programmes in the field. In this regard, recipient countries should be aware of this situation and inform the executing agency in order to implement additional measures so as to avoid duplicity.

COMCO also participated in the discussion. Mr. Krauskopf mentioned that COMPAL in terms of its international or global dimension, is the most successful programme of the Swiss international cooperation. He added that before starting to think about the COMPAL II programme and taking into account Mr. Evenett's lessons and  reflections, it should be important to undertake a comprehensive assessment of COMPAL I in order to reduce inefficiencies of the Programme. He finally added that if one needs to really focus on the national dimension of COMPAL, there may be a tension between deepening and widening COMPAL at the same time. In this regard, there is undoubtedly a challenge taking into account that if sustainability is to be a goal of COMPAL II, the best option to realize this goal would be deepening COMPAL.

SECO represented by Mr. Egler intervened after having heard all participants' interventions. At the outset, SECO made it clear that the topic of competition is still on the agenda and SECO would like to strengthen the issue with developing countries.  Mr. Egler agreed that substantive achievements have been carried out in COMPAL. He also mentioned the problem of duplicity as highlighted by Mr. Evenett earlier, which it should be avoided we should find ways to avoid it. For instance, an open dialogue may help to better assess the national context and circumstances. On the other hand, it is difficult to find out what other partners are doing for the same recipient countries. It would be desirable to have a good way of coordinators by working very carefully with the countries. As regards, the national circumstances, the idea of a “steering committee approach” might be useful to address these problems. Mr. Egler also referred to the idea of optimizing both approached mentioned earlier: widening and deepening COMPAL for the future. In this regard, he said that as long as COMPAL wide its scope with strong countries, which have necessary resources at disposal, then it could be possible to enrich the other COMPAL countries. The idea is to invite Latin American countries to join COMPAL with a two-way cooperation. Thus, the dilemma between widening and deepening may be handled in such a way. For instance, countries such as Brazil and Argentina may simply participate in the process as they can provide and receive assistance in both ways. SECO also mentioned the issue of the selection of the beneficiary countries which depends on the donor's political priorities. In this regard, it was mentioned that Honduras is not a priority country for Switzerland. In this regard, a potential new country could be Colombia. In addition, Brazil and Argentina could associate COMPAL in different ways taking into consideration different level of memberships that the PMC can put forward for COMPAL II.  Mr. Egler referred that as COMPAL is not a programme for eternity, it should not be wise to have a general technical assistance for the beneficiary countries. Hence, the idea of deepening is also endorsed by SECO. A final word from SECO and to be regarded as a conclusion of SECO's intervention was that SECO plans to undertake an external assessment of the programme, which includes partners and beneficiaries' participation. This external assessment should take place within the next month that is in July 2007.