Japan has pledged to provide 12 billion USD to help developing countries take advantage of world trade to facilitate their economic growth during the three-year period to 2011, said Kyodo News.

A total of 40,000 people from these countries will be provided with technical assistance during the next three years, Kyodo News quoted Shintaro Ito, state secretary for foreign affairs, as saying in Geneva on July 6 as the representative of the Japanese government to a World Trade Organization conference on the ''Aid for Trade'' process.

The process, launched at a WTO ministerial conference in 2005, is designed to help poor nations, particularly least developed countries, build trade-related infrastructure like ports and roads and train citizens in trade-related matters, in order to take full advantage of global trade liberalization.

In a similar contribution to the ''Aid for Trade'' process, Japan disbursed 10 billion USD in the three-year period to 2008./.