In April 2001 the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) invited the Vietnamese Prime Minister’s Research Commission (PMRC) to work jointly on a study on the topic of inter-ministerial coordination during WTO accession. The background of this offer was the shared view of the need to improve national trade-related governance capacities. A few weeks later, a group consisting of two PMRC specialists and one representative of the Vietnam Institute for Trade (VIT), together with four other experts from the Prime Minister’s Group on External Economic Relations (GEER), conducted a one-week study trip to Geneva. The result of this joint effort was a comprehensive study on the issue of “Inter-ministerial Coordination during WTO Accession,” including practical recommendations on how to improve the Viet-namese system of trade-related coordination. Since the empirical and less sensitive part of the original report might be useful for a broader audience – in particular for gaining a better understanding of the institutional challenges de-veloping and transition countries face during the current round of global trade talks -, INEF is now publishing, with the permission of GTZ, a substantially revised and updated version of the previous study.