Members welcome Laos’ first goods offer

         Laos has submitted its first offer on market access for goods, a proposal that some members said was almost good enough for them to accept as far as industrial products are concerned. But in their 30 November 2006 meeting they sought more information on Laos’ trading regime and looked forward to the offer on services, which Laos has promised to deliver before the next meeting.

       Nevertheless, the talks are still in their early stages. This two-hour meeting was only the second of the 28-member working party (53 if the EU’s member states are also counted) and two years after the first meeting.

       Ahead lie further negotiations on the goods offer, and from Laos, its first offer in services followed by more negotiations, a considerable amount of wide-ranging information on Laos’ trading regime, action plans to make its laws and regulations conform with WTO agreements, and bilateral agreements with key trading partners — Laos said it had met six of them during the week. “

       There is considerable work to be done,” said working party chairperson Bruce Gosper, Australia’s ambassador. “I would encourage the negotiating team from Vientiane to use the feedback received in bilateral contacts with members in further work on the goods offer. In addition, … the market access negotiations would benefit by Laos tabling an initial offer on services soon and, in any case, well before the next meeting of the working party.”

       Members said they will be flexible with Laos — officially the Lao People’s Democratic Republic — because it is a landlocked least-developed country (LDC) without a representative in Geneva. As an LDC, Laos is covered by the 2002 General Council guidelines for accelerating membership negotiations (document WT/L/508).

       “Today’s session is a very important event in Lao PDR’s accession process, which the Lao government sees as critical to economic development and poverty alleviation in our country by further integrating out economy into the world trading system,” said Industry and Commerce Minister Nam Viyaketh, who led the 15-member Lao delegation.

       Because of the amount of work needed, no date has been set for the next meeting. For that meeting, Laos has promised to provide more details on a range of subjects such as technical barriers to trade (essentially technical standards applied to traded goods), sanitary and phytosanitary measures (i.e. food safety and animal and plant health), intellectual property protection, customs valuation, further plans for legislation, as well as its first offer on services.

       Based on these inputs, the Secretariat will prepare a “factual summary of points raised”, a first document that will eventually evolve into the working party’s report, which is one of the three key components of the final membership deal.

 

( WTO: 2006 NEWS ITEMS )