DUSHANBE, October 22, 2009, Asia-Plus — A seminar, entitled “The World Trade Organization (WTO) and Regulation of Services Trade in Compliance with WTO Requirements,” for representatives of private sector has opened in Dushanbe today.
The seminar, which is part of USAID-funded Regional Trade Liberalization and Customs (RTLC) Project, aims to provide assistance to the government with conducting more detailed study of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is a treaty of WTO that entered into force in January 1995 as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations. The treaty was created to extend the multilateral trading system to service sector, in the same way GATS provides such a system for merchandise trade. All members of the WTO are signatories to GATS. The basic WTO principle of most favorable nation (MFN) applies to GATS as well.
Mr. Richard Self, expert in trade in services, RTLC, noted that in 2001, in his annual address to parliament, President Rahmon spoke for a speedy joining of the WTO. According to him, by this decision the government and the leadership of the country have expressed their adherence to reforming legislative and economic foundations in compliance with international rules of foreign economic relations with future partners within WTO.
The USAID-funded Regional Trade Liberalization and Customs (RTLC) Project in Central Asia aims to foster economic growth and improve the competitiveness of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan by improving the conditions for international and cross-border trade and transit. The project is assisting the three countries in achieving improvements in the transparency, clarity, predictability, and certainty of the trading environment, thus allowing importers, exporters, and producers to trade more effectively and efficiently with a minimum of government intrusion.
RTLC implements its activities under two closely related components: Trade Liberalization and Trade Facilitation and Integration. In Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. Across the region, RTLC supports and coordinates efforts to reduce trade barriers relating to transport, transit, border crossing, and customs clearance. The project also works to expand regional cooperation for data collection and sharing, including increasing the access of SMEs to market information within and beyond the region. Across all activities, RTLC emphasizes the importance of regional cooperation and multilateral trade liberalization within the WTO context in order to allow the countries to reap the biggest gains from rationalization of trade-related policies.
