WTO

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs And Trade (GATT), which commenced in 1948.

The organization deals with regulation of trade between participating countries It provides a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participants' adherence to WTO agreements which are signed by representatives of member governments and ratified by their parliments. Most of the issues that the WTO focuses on derive from previous trade negotiations, especially from the Uruguay Round (19861994).

8th round of Multilateral trade negotiations (MTN) conducted within the framework of the (GATT), spanning from 1986-1994 embracing 123 countries as contracting parties.

The main objectives of the Uruguay Round were: to reduce agricultural subsidies to put restrictions on foreign investment, and to begin the process of opening trade in services like banking and insurance. They also wanted to draft a code to deal with copyright violation and other forms of intellectual propertyrights.

The organization is currently endeavoring to persist with a trade negotiation called the Doha Development Agenda (or Doha Round) launched in 2001 Now there are 165 countries to enhance equitable participation of poorer countries which represent a majority of the world's population. The Doha round was to be an ambitious effort to make globalization more inclusive and help the world's poor, particularly by slashing barriers and subsidies in farming.

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