Trade monitoring

The World Trade Report 2007 is the fifth in a series launched in 2002. This year’s Report marks sixty years of multilateralism in trade through the GATT/WTO. On 1 January 1948 the GATT came into being with 23 signatories. Six decades on, at the beginning of next year, we celebrate a WTO with over 150 Members. This is an institution that has changed and grown in fascinating ways, striving to meet the challenges posed by increasingly complex trade relations in a globalizing world. The GATT/WTO has evolved from its comparatively modest focus in the early years on reducing and binding tariffs on manufactured goods to encompass a deeper and wider set of disciplines across a range of policy areas. At the same time, over sixty years the system has brought together a growing number of nations at different levels of development, with varied policy priorities, in a cooperative endeavour to forge an international trade policy regime that promises mutual gain.

El éxito logrado en la Novena Conferencia Ministerial de la OMC en diciembre de 2013 dio un nuevo impulso a la labor en el marco del Programa de Doha para el Desarrollo en 2014.

Regulating trade opening is only one of the many challenges facing a rapidly integrating world economy. But it is also one where we already have a system that has shown resilience in the current crisis. Like all assets, what it needs is not just proper maintenance, but also investment in the future.

WTO members are frequently referred to as “countries”, although some members are not countries in the usual sense of the word but are officially “customs territories”. The definition of geographical and other groupings in this report does not imply an expression of opinion by the Secretariat concerning the status of any country or territory, the delimitation of its frontiers, nor the rights and obligations of any WTO member in respect of WTO agreements. The colours, boundaries, denominations, and classifications in the maps of this publication do not imply, on the part of the WTO, any judgement on the legal or other status of any territory, or any endorsement or acceptance of any boundary.

The Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM) was first established on a trial basis by the GATT contracting parties in April 1989. The Mechanism became a permanent feature of the World Trade Organization under the Marrakesh Agreement which established the WTO in January 1995.

En cuatro reuniones celebradas en 2012 el Consejo del Comercio de Mercancías aprobó varias solicitudes de exención, individuales y colectivas, como la prórroga de la exención relativa al Sistema de Certificación del Proceso de Kimberley, la armonización en curso de las listas arancelarias y los derechos aplicados por la Unión Europea a determinadas mercancías procedentes del Pakistán. También examinó una serie de preocupaciones comerciales planteadas por los Miembros.

The Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) for trade-related assistance to LDCs became effectively operational in 2009. By the end of the year, 47 LDCs were involved in the EI F process, and the EI F Trust Fund had risen to US $ 90 million. The breadth of support enjoyed by the EI F was manifest at the EI F Ministerial event hosted by the Director-General on the margins of the Seventh WTO Ministerial Conference in December 2009.

En esta sección se examinan los problemas y las oportunidades que crean las estrategias de crecimiento y desarrollo centradas en los productos básicos cuando los precios son relativamente altos pero volátiles. En primer lugar figura un panorama histórico de la evolución de los precios de los recursos agropecuarios y naturales. A continuación se analiza el modo en que los países en desarrollo han logrado promover su desarrollo sacando partido de la exportación de sus productos agropecuarios y naturales en este contexto de precios altos. En la sección se ponen de relieve las políticas que han dado buenos resultados y a la vez se señalan los problemas que persisten para hacer efectivo el potencial de exportación. Por último, también se abordan los problemas derivados del aumento de la volatilidad, centrándose en particular en los importadores de alimentos y los exportadores de recursos naturales vulnerables a los ciclos de expansión y recesión.

The previous sections of this report identified the benefits that SMEs derive from participating in international trade (Section C) and the obstacles they face (Section D). This section discusses existing international cooperative approaches that directly or indirectly facilitate SMEs’ participation in trade. These include SMErelated initiatives in regional trade agreements (RTAs), in regional institutions (e.g. the African Development Bank) and in multilateral institutions (e.g. the World Bank), as well as in the WTO.