Essay on the The Objectives of World Trade Organisation !
The setting up of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was agreed to by 125 countries on April 15, 1994 at a conference in Marrakesh which concluded the strenuous Uruguay round of GATT negotiations after more than seven years of hard bargaining. The new World Trade Organisation which replaces the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT), had come into effect from January 1, 1995 with the backing of atleast 85 founding members, including India.
The Members of Uruguay Round Talks concluded to establish the WTO by recognising that their relations in the field of trade and economic endeavour should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the production of and trade in goods and services, while allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment and to enhance the means for doing in a manner consistent with their respective needs and concerns at different levels of economic development.
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They further recognised that there is need for positive efforts designed to ensure that developing countries, and especially the least developed among them, secure a share in the growth in international trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development.
The members being desirous of contributing to these objectives by entering into reciprocal and mutually advantageous arrangements directed to the substantial reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade and to the elimination of discriminatory treatment in international trade relations.
The members, therefore, resolved to establish the WTO to develop an integrated, more viable and durable multilateral trading system encompassing the GATT, the results of past trade liberalisation efforts, and all of the results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations.