WTO

[|The World Trade Organization (WTO)] was set up following the Marrakech Agreement on 1 January 1995. It is the successor to the GATT and its Secretariat. It has a global membership and is headed by a Ministerial Conference of all members. According to the Marrakech Agreement, the mandate of the WTO is to
 * provide a forum for negotiations;
 * facilitate the implementation and operation of multilateral trading agreements;
 * administer the dispute settlement mechanism;
 * provide multilateral surveillance of trade policies; and
 * cooperate with the IMF and the World Bank to achieve greater coherence in global economic policy making.

WTO Members set up a single institutional framework for the many multilateral and plurilateral trade agreements that had been concluded under the auspices of the GATT and the Uruguay Round. These agreements are collected in the Marrakech Agreement establishing the WTO and bind all signatories of this agreement. They include: Two plurilateral agreements are also collected in the Marrakech Agreement: the Agreement on Government Procurement, and the Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft. They are binding only to signatories to these particular agreements. =Work related to trade facilitation= Although there is no single agreement that specifically provides a legal framework for measures aimed at trade facilitation, existing WTO agreements cover some aspects. The Customs Valuation Agreement and the Rules of Origin Agreements, both supplementary agreements to the GATT, are concerned with the classification and valuation of goods for clearance purposes. The Preshipment Inspection Agreement seeks to establish disciplines for carrying out mandatory preshipment inspections. Some sources also consider the GATT 1994 Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) as having an impact on trade facilitation. This agreement embodies disciplines on the adoption of technical regulations and standards, and on conformity assessments so that these regulations do not become a barrier to trade. A similar approach is taken in the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS). Other trade facilitation disciplines can be found in the GATT 1994 Articles V, VIII, and X. These articles include transparency-related obligations (Article X), transit-related disciplines (Article V), and provisions regarding the procedures and fees for the import and export of goods (Article VIII). At the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Singapore in 1996, trade facilitation was included in the agenda of the next round of trade negotiations. This round was officially launched in Doha in 2001, as the Doha Development Round, and is still on-going, In the WTO negotiations on trade facilitation, WTO members seek to draft a new legal framework for trade facilitation. = = =WTO instruments that are covered in this wiki=
 * the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 (incorporating GATT 1947 and amendments made by understandings and supplementary agreements to the GATT);
 * the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS); and
 * the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
 * The WTO Valuation Agreement, 1994 ||
 * WTO Glossary ||
 * WTO Best Practices ||