Economic Commission for Europe study on regulatory and procedural barriers to trade in Azerbaijan: project outline

Summary
Studies of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) on regulatory and procedural barriers to trade (RPBT) are demand-driven, conducted upon the request of member States, to support economic diversification in the countries of the ECE region. The secretariat has already published RPBT studies of several ECE programme countries, including Albania, Armenia Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Moldova, Serbia and Tajikistan. During the seventh session of the Steering Committee on Trade Capacity on 27–28 June 2022, the delegation of Azerbaijan requested to conduct an RPBT study. In December 2023, the ECE Executive Committee approved the extra-budgetary project “Strengthening capacity of Azerbaijan to reduce regulatory and procedural barriers to trade”, funded by Azerbaijan, which envisages developing elements of the RPBT study. This document presents the outline of a scoping study to be conducted with the currently available funds. The work will be expanded contingent on the availability of additional funding. The ECE secretariat calls on donors and development partners to consider providing funding to offer continuation of this project.