16 TRADE & FINANCE
ENHANCING MULTI-LATERAL TRADE
The World Trade Organization
is marking its 20th
anniversary this year. While
these two decades have
brought numerous challenges,
the WTO has succeeded in
significantly enhancing the
multilateral trading system.
Director-General, Roberto Azevêdo,
WTO Director-General
The WTO has broadened the trading system
considerably since 1995, welcoming thirty-
three new members, including giants like
China and Russia. Today almost all of the
world’s economies are now part of a single
trading system. International rules, not power,
increasingly govern trade relations, and
conflicts are settled, not in trade wars, but
in the WTO’s dispute settlement system –
which serves as a global trade court. Trade
barriers continue to fall – to the point where
well over half of global trade is now tariff
free – and economies are becoming ever
more interconnected. In this context the WTO
provides a key forum for policy dialogue,
information sharing, and economic cooperation
“There are many reasons
why developing countries
have achieved economic
lift-off, but surely none
is more important than
their integration into the
global economy”
among its 161 members – making it an
increasingly critical pillar of today’s system of
global governance.
While progress in the Doha Development
Agenda – the latest in a long line of trade
‘rounds’ – has proved very difficult, a
growing list of new WTO agreements –
covering everything from customs reform,
to information technology products, to
government procurement, to financial and