Department of STRUCTURAL
ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
and TRADE (SETT)

OACPS > Department of Structural Economic Transformation and Trade (SETT)

The Department of Structural Economic Development and Trade (SETT) coordinates the Secretariat’s activities in the areas of sustainable economic development, with a focus on trade and trade-related issues such as commodities and value chain development, customs cooperation, market access and WTO negotiations. It undertakes and ensures the follow-up of activities in the areas of investment promotion and private sector development.

Assistant Secretary-General: Mr Escipión Joaquín OLIVEIRA GOMEZ

Assistant Secretary-General of the Structural Economic Transformation and Trade – Citizen of the Dominican Republic

Mr. Oliveira has 30 years of experience in drafting, managing, supervising, and evaluating multi-donor programmes and projects for the creation and strengthening of Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) and Business Support Organisations in the six OACPS regions at national, regional and all-ACP levels.

Before joining the OACPS, he served as Deputy Executive Director of the Caribbean Export Development Agency since 2011. He was Sector Coordinator for “Information and Communications Technologies” and “Tourism” as well as Regional Coordinator for Southern and Eastern Africa at the ACP-EU Centre for the Development of Enterprise (CDE) (2005-2008) and also served as Expert, Private Sector at the then, ACP Secretariat, contributing to the development of the first private sector development strategy of the Group and participated in the review of the Cotonou Agreement (2002 to 2005). Mr. Oliveira holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration with a major in Finance (1994) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Business (1992) from the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium; a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the “Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo”, Dominican Republic (1990); and an internship in the European Commission’s General Directorate for Development Cooperation DGVIII (1995)

The projects and programmes of the department are

  • Trade and Investment Facilitation
  • Value Chains
  • MSME Development
  • WTO negotiations and relations with international organisations in Geneva, Switzerland
  • Coordination of the Business Forum

Recent news from the SETT Department

AgriFI and ElectriFI launch new country and regional windows

Brussels, 17 February 2022/OACPS: In the framework of the 7th edition of the EU-Africa Business Forum (EABF), AgriFI, the European Union (EU)-funded Agriculture Financing Initiative in partnership with the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) and ElectrFI, the EU-funded Electrification Financing Initiative, hosted a signing ceremony and launch event on 16 February 2022.

Read more

Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment in Africa through Public-Private Partnerships

Brussels, 17 February 2022/OACPS: Within the framework of the 7th EU-Africa Business Forum (EABF), a high-level event was dedicated to the empowerment of women, in particular t

Read more

9th Ministerial Conference of the Least Developed Countries: The Next Decade of Action: Accelerating ISID in LDCs

     The Least Developed Countries’ (LDCs) category was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1971 and refers today to 46 countries that are diverse in their economic, social and political structures but which face structural challenges and constraints. These halt their productive capacities and make them particularly vulnerable to external shocks. Macroeconomic […]

Read more