Rabat – Morocco will organize and chair the 3rd mini-ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on October 9 and 10 in Marrakech.
The announcement was made following a meeting between Mohammed Aujjar, the Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations, and the WTO Director General, Robert Azevedo. An informal preparatory meeting of the 11th Ministerial Conference of the Organization, the meeting was great importance for Morocco, the WTO coordinator of the African Group, as well as to all African members, especially the least developed.
Morocco has been a member of the WTO since its inception in 1995 and a member of GATT since 1987. In addition, Morocco is a member of various regional trade agreements such as the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), the Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA), and the Arab-Mediterranean Free Trade Agreement known as the Agadir Agreement. The Kingdom has signed bilateral Free Trade Agreements with regional groupings such as the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the European Community (EC), the United States. Discussions are ongoing with other countries including Canada.
The WTO is an intergovernmental organization which regulates international trade. The WTO officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakesh Agreement, signed by 123 nations on 15 April 1994, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which commenced in 1948.
The WTO deals with regulation of trade between participating countries by providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements and a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participants’ adherence to WTO agreements, which are signed by representatives of member governments and ratified by their parliaments. Most of the issues that the WTO focuses on derive from previous trade negotiations, especially from the Uruguay Round (1986–1994).
