Negotiations under WTO
- 1. Presented by Ankit Pandey Arun Pandey Gaurav Gupta Shivam Gupta
- 2. A supreme international organization that was set up to facilitate, supervise and liberalize the international trade. Formed in 1995 and headquarters are in Geneva. It has 164 members, that represents the 95% of the total world trade.
- 3. The Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) operates under the authority of the General Council. It was set up by the Doha Declaration to handle negotiating subjects.
- 4. The Doha Round is the latest round of trade negotiations among the WTO membership. Its aim is to achieve major reform of the international trading system through the introduction of lower trade barriers and revised trade rules. Under this, the Doha Ministerial Declaration provided the mandate for the negotiations, including on agriculture, services and an intellectual property topic, which began earlier.
- 5. WTO members continue to conduct negotiations to reform agricultural trade. These talks began in early 2000 under the original mandate of the Agriculture Agreement and became part of the Doha Round at the 2001 Doha Ministerial Conference. At the 2013 Bali Ministerial Conference, ministers adopted important decisions on agriculture. More recently, at the 2015 Nairobi Ministerial Conference, WTO members agreed on a historic decision to eliminate agricultural export subsidies,
- 6. he General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) mandates WTO member governments to progressively liberalize trade in services through successive rounds of negotiations. Under the mandate of Article XIX, the latest round of negotiations began in January 2000. At the Doha Ministerial Conference in November 2001 the services negotiations became part of the single undertaking under the Doha Development Agenda, whereby all subjects under the negotiations are to be concluded at the same time.
- 7. The TRIPS agreement introduced intellectual property law into the international trading system for the first time and remains the most comprehensive international agreement on intellectual property to date. It introduced WTO members to provide copyright rights and patent, covering content producers including performers, producers of sound recordings and broadcasting organizations; geographical indications, including appellations of origin; industrial designs; integrated circuit layout-designs; patents; new plant varieties; trademarks; trade dress; and undisclosed or confidential information.