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Exchange of Opinions on the Situation with Multilateral negotiations on Liberalization of Trade in WTO to Take Place in Baku

Business Materials 27 November 2006 15:34 (UTC +04:00)

Kato Adrian, Secretary of the Working Group for Azerbaijan of WTO (World Trade Organization) and Ali Hussein, Chief of the Department for the Entrance of the WTO Secretariat, has arrived with a one-day working visit to Baku.

It was for the first time when such senior WTO official paid a visit to Azerbaijan, a source in the Azerbaijan Foreign Office told Trend

A round table discussion devoted to discussing results of all meetings to be held in Azerbaijan, as well as an opinion exchange over the present situation over multilateral negotiations on liberalization of trade in WTO are expected to be held within the visit.

Members of the negotiation group and representatives from the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan are expected to participate in this meeting.

Azerbaijan is at the stage of answering the questions forwarded by the member-states of the Organization, which have been sent to the WTO Secretariat.

Until the fifth meeting which will be held in February, 2007, Azerbaijan is about to hold negotiations with several WTO member-states.

Azerbaijan has already had four meetings with WTO. The first ones were devoted to discuss the foreign trade regime. Since 2005, the Country has launched full-scale negotiations (the last two meetings). The bilateral talks are held on issues of an access of goods and services to Azerbaijan market. The multilateral talks are held on internal support of the agriculture and export subsidies.

Within the multilateral talks, questions have been forwarded by Canada, USA, EU, Turkey, and Japan. Questions from USA, Canada, USA, Australia, Japan, and China have been received for preparation work on bilateral negotiations.

USA and Canada are interested in issues of licensing, tariff policy, custom law, rights of the intellectual property. WTO member-states want to clarify if the tariff policy in Azerbaijan is liberal and transparent. According to the WTO requirements, a united regime for both imported and local goods and services should be introduced.

EU and U.S. insist that the country that joins WTO should take obligations on all custom tariffs as much as possible.

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