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Pamela Coke-Hamilton
Executive Director
International Trade Center
Pamela Coke-Hamilton is the Executive Director of the International Trade Centre (ITC), the joint agency of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization dedicated to supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs in developing countries to trade.
An international trade lawyer by training, she has spent her career working across government and international organizations, and with the private sector, to expand economic opportunities through trade. Before leading ITC, she held senior leadership roles at UNCTAD, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Export Development Agency. She began her career in Jamaica’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, with her first posting at the Permanent Mission of Jamaica in Geneva during the Uruguay Round Negotiations.
Since taking the helm of ITC in 2020, she has championed a simple but powerful idea: That trade is ultimately about people, and that economic opportunity should be accessible to those who have historically been left furthest from global markets.
Speaking At
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1:45–3:15pmTue 17 NovPublic-Private RoundtableRoundtable Room 4OpenModerator
Shaping Tomorrow's Innovation
Policy Meets Capital: Closing the SME Finance Gap
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Amira KarimHead of International Public Policy, Payments & Financial ServicesAmazon
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Arianne FerrerHead of External Affairs, Asia-PacificTala
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Helena ForestExecutive Vice President, Global Product & Commercial, Real Time PaymentsMastercard
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Jiang FangfangAsia Lead for Digital Financial ServiceInternational Finance Corporation
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Nontobeko LubisiDirector, Financial InclusionNational Treasury of South Africa
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Pamela Coke-HamiltonExecutive DirectorInternational Trade CenterModerator
About this session
SMEs in developing economies face a financing gap of about US$5.7 trillion, and it is growing faster than the economies themselves. Supply alone will not close it. Policy, data and market infrastructure must develop alongside it.
This roundtable brings ministers responsible for SMEs together with leaders from payments, fintech, banking and development finance. It looks at three questions:
- Which cross-border payment and trade-finance rails would help SMEs sell abroad?
- How can governments crowd in private lending at scale?
- What role should the public sector play in enabling digital lending, including alternative data and AI credit scoring?
As a Singapore stop on the Road to Geneva, the discussion will produce priorities for the 2nd Global SME Ministerial Meeting in May 2027 and for the SME Trade Finance Facility.
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