A notable achievement expected at UNCTAD XI is the formal launch by Ministers of a Third Round of Trade Negotiations under the auspices of the Global System of Trade Preferences Among Developing Countries (GSTP).

This is expected at a High Level Meeting of the GSTP Committee of Participants organised by UNCTAD on 16 June 2004 in Sao Paulo. The trade of GSTP members was estimated at US$ 2 trillion in 2000, or about 55 percent of the trade of all developing countries. The Committee of Participants, chaired by Ambassador Alfredo Chiaradia of Argentina, administers the System in Geneva with the technical support of the UNCTAD secretariat.

Slated to begin in November 2004, the multilateral trade negotiations envisage preferential trade arrangements among forty-four developing countries. China and the Group of 77 will be invited to take part in the agreement on negotiations, which are expected to be concluded in two years.

The Meeting will discuss ways to reinvigorate and give new direction to GSTP as an instrument of south-south regional and inter-regional trade liberalization and economic cooperation. The promotion of trade among developing countries is expected to contribute to strengthening world trade as a whole.

Established in 1989, the GSTP serves as a framework for the exchange of trade preferences among developing countries to promote trade among them. The decision to launch a new round of trade negotiations was inspired by the recommendations of the Twelfth Summit of the Heads of State and Government of the Group of Fifteen held in February 2004 in Caracas, Venezuela, and the High-level Conference on South-South Cooperation held in Marrakech, Morocco, in December 2003.