WTO meet next week: Appellate body, reforms in focus
India has convened this WTO (World Trade Organization) ministerial meeting of 16 developing and six least developed countries next week, the Commerce Ministry said.
By ET Bureau | Updated:
Agencies
The 22 countries would also try to build consensus on how to move forward on the WTO reforms.
NEW DELHI: A WTO miniministerial meeting of 16 developing and six least-developed countries in Delhi next week will take up impasse over the appointment of appellate body members at the World Trade Organisation and reforms at the global trade body.
“There is concern among all countries against unilateralism,” a government official said. “We want to maintain the WTO’s function as an effective body.”
The mini-ministerial on Monday and Tuesday comes ahead of a G-20 countries’ meeting in June that will focus on global rules in ecommerce.
“In the recent past, there have been increasing unilateral measures and counter measures by members, deadlock in key areas of negotiations, and the impasse in the appellate body, which threaten the very existence of dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO and impacts the position of the WTO as an effective multilateral organisation,” the commerce ministry said in a statement on Friday.
The current situation has given rise to demands from various quarters to reform WTO, it said.
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The 22 countries would try to build a consensus on how to move forward on the WTO reforms, while preserving the fundamentals of the multilateral trading system.
“The deliberations will aim at getting a direction on how to constructively engage on various issues in the WTO, both institutional and negotiating, in the run up to the Twelfth Ministerial Conference of the WTO to be held in Kazakhstan in June 2020,” the ministry said.
Ministers from Bangladesh, Central African Republic and South Africa have confirmed their participation in the mini-ministerial.
