Overview of The WTO

 Objective of presentation

 WTO: The Beginnings

 Growth in Trade Underway

 A New Multilateral Organization

 The WTO: what is it?

 How does the WTO function?

 Principles of the Trading System

 Provisions for developing countries

 Progressing by packages

 The Round to end all rounds

 The WTO Agreement

 Liberalising trade in goods

 Textiles - back in the mainstream

 Agriculture: fairer markets for all

 Trade remedies

 Standards and procedures

 Administrative procedures

 Services: rules for growth and investment

 Services: the key rules

 Services: Better Access to Markets

 Intellectual Property: protection and enforcement of rights

 TRIPS: what does it cover?

 Settling Disputes: the heart of the system

 Meetings of Ministers

  Singapore Ministerial

 Geneva and Seattle Ministerials

 Doha Ministerial Meeting

 Cancun Ministerial Meeting

 Recent Developments

Growth in Trade Underway

World trade and output since 1948

The improvements in the post war trading system have manifested themselves in a variety of ways. Since 1948, world trade has consistently grown faster than world output. In fact, the volume of trade in goods has grown by an average 6 per cent a year, whereas world merchandise output has increased by 4 per cent a year. In volume terms, that represents an 18-fold increase in world trade since 1948. Exports of manufactured goods are now 43 times higher than they were 50 years ago.

The end result is that around one quarter of world production is now traded. This means that one quarter of world production is subject to the rules of international trade.  The institution that creates and enforces those rules is the World Trade Organization.

Eight rounds of negotiations

Much of the post war trade expansion can be traced to eight rounds of multilateral trade negotiations carried out under the auspices of the GATT. Each round has involved more countries than the one before. It has resulted in dramatic reductions in tariffs on industrial goods. Average tariffs among industrialized countries were progressively cut from between 40 and 50 percent to less than 4 per cent. Most non-tariff restrictions - such as quantitative restrictions - have been abandoned. As far as rules are concerned, those contained in the original GATT of 1947 have been developed and elaborated in the light of experience. In this manner, market-access gains achieved through tariff cuts could not be cancelled out by new trade barriers such as subsidies, discriminatory technical standards and unreasonable regulations and procedures.

GATT is not perfect

Notwithstanding the considerable expansion in trade, the GATT was in some ways an unsatisfactory instrument. It was a provisional and makeshift agreement pressed into service because the International Trade Organization was still-born. Its arrangements for settling disputes were ineffective. If governments chose to disregard the dispute settlement rulings then they could - and they did. Also, the reach of the GATT rules did not go beyond trade in goods. The time had come when international commerce also embraced trade in services and trade related aspects of intellectual property rights.

Enter the WTO

As a result, the GATT has now been replaced by the World Trade Organization.  The WTO comprises a wide variety of legally binding multilateral trade agreements covering a vast area of international activity. The rules contained in these agreements are adhered to by almost 150 countries accounting for well over 90 per cent of world trade. It was with the successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round - the eighth round of negotiations under the auspices of GATT - that the WTO entered into force on 1 January 1995.