This week, the State Commission for Azerbaijan's Entrance to the World Trade Organization (WTO) forwarded the responses to the questions of the WTO member-countries to the WTO Secretariat in Geneva, Trend reports with reference to the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan. After considering the responses in the WTO Secretariat, a preliminary report Factorial Summary will be prepared on base of them. It will reflect the works done by Azerbaijan within this period. The report will be a base for preparing other documents such as concluding report regarding Azerbaijan in the future.
The preliminary document should be agreed with the working group till the 5th stage of the negotiations regarding Azerbaijan's entrance to WTO, which has been scheduled for November 2006. The countries represented in the working group should express attitude towards the report.
By present Azerbaijan has held four meetings with WTO. The first two meetings covered the external trade regime, and during the last two meeting, Azerbaijan began full-scale talks.
Within the multilateral talks, questions had been presented by Canada, USA, European Union, Turkey and Japan. For the preparation to the bilateral negotiations, questions have been received from USA, Canada, European Union, Australia, Japan and China.
The USA and Canada are interested in licensing, tariff policy, customs legislation, rights of intellectual properties, etc. According to the demands of WTO, an equal regime should be created for imported and local commodities and services.
The position of the European Union and USA is that the countries entering the WTO should maximally undertake obligations for customs tariffs.