Thursday, December 7, 2006

CASTRIES, St Lucia: OECS Member states on Tuesday commenced preparation for their second World Trade Organisation (WTO) Trade Policy Review scheduled for December 2007.

The six OECS Members States held their first Trade Policy Review in 2001 where Ministers presented reports of the trade policies of the different island states as well as a collective report on the OECS as an integrated region.

The OECS member states is among the three regions that present their Trade Policy Review as a group rather than as individual countries. The others are the East African Community and the Southern African Customs Union.

The monitoring of national trade policies is a fundamentally important activity running throughout the work of the WTO. At the centre of this work is the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM).

This Mechanism allows for transparency among WTO members which serves to ensure the efficiency of the multilateral trading system.

The greater clarity created in domestic trade policies serves to reduce uncertainty and promote trade, and domestically to allow countries to better understand the effect and relationship of their policies to enable them to better take advantage of the WTO rules-based system.

All WTO members are reviewed, the frequency of each country’s review varying according to its share of world trade. OECS countries that have among the smallest share in world trade, approximately 0.0061 percent, are obligated to undergo a Review every 6 years.

The Review will allow other WTO members to assess the domestic policy of the OECS countries. Much of the work is coordinated between the trade ministries of the countries and the WTO Secretariat.

With this particular TPR, the OECS countries have the benefit of an OECS Mission in Geneva to assist and coordinate between the WTO Secretariat and Member States. The OECS Geneva Mission is represented at this Seminar by Mr. Elliott Paige.

This first Seminar on the Trade Policy Review held the 6-7 December 2006 in St Lucia, is the collaboration between the OECS Secretariat and the WTO Secretariat to ensure that all the relevant government officials and private sector representatives can be present to start the process of preparing for their TPR.

Trade officials from all OECS members’ states will hear presentations on the Trade Policy Review Mechanism from WTO Secretariat, led by the Director if the Trade Policy Review Division of the WTO, Clemens Boonekamp. The OECS Secretariat, led by the Senior Director of the Economic Affairs Division, Randolph Cato, will also elaborate on the OECS institutional frameworks that have been created to assist member states in trade policy making.

Government officials will also have the opportunity to present a preliminary analysis of their trade regime. Given the discussions in Geneva on Aid for Trade, the OECS countries will also have the benefit of a presentation from the Agency for International Trade Information and Cooperation (AITIC) by their Executive Director Dr. Esperanza Duran.

So far there are three OECS countries that are members of AITIC benefiting from a variety of technical assistance relating to trade, including a trade brainstorming session held in Dominica in October of this year funded by AITIC and the OECS Secretariat Mission through EU funding.

This Seminar marks the first in the preparatory process, which will include several visits by the WTO Secretariat TPR staff and assistance from OECS Secretariat to individual member states of the OECS to collect and collate information on domestic trade policy.

The review also gives member states and the OECS Secretariat the opportunity to have a comprehensive updated study on their own domestic policies from a perspective of trade policy. This process will culminate in Ministers of Trade from the OECS presenting their reports on December 5, 2007 and responses to questions of other WTO members on December 7, 2007.

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