International Trade

Review of FAS Attache Service Gao ID: NSIAD-89-73 February 23, 1989

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service's (FAS) attache activities, focusing on: (1) FAS overseas market development planning activities; and (2) attaches' role in reporting and coordinating FAS activities, overseas posting, and staff qualifications.

GAO found that FAS: (1) generally considers present or potential markets for U.S. agricultural products as a factor in selecting its overseas posts locations; (2) assigned a large percentage of its staff to Europe to maintain U.S. exports to Europe and to concentrate on major trade centers, and increased its staffing in third-world countries to meet a projected growth in agricultural trade; (3) market planning and development did not incorporate benchmarks or measures for determining the program's success; (4) believes that an improved relationship between it and nonprofit commodity groups would enhance U.S. agricultural product marketing overseas; (5) planned to implement various external recommendations regarding its reporting requirements; (6) was responsible for planning and coordinating mission activities and arranging meetings between mission teams, private-sector representatives, and host countries; and (7) emphasized foreign language proficiency in its staff and training policies.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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