World Trade Organization (WTO) презентація

World Trade Organization (WTO) is the successor to General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). According to the agreement reached in the Uruguay Round, GATT was converted into a formal international organization called World Trade Organization. WTO came into operation on 1st January 1995. Now, WTO serves as an international framework for world trade. It is being directed by a Ministerial conference which will meet at least once every two years. Its normal business operations will be overseen by General council.

Its headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland.

The objectives of the WTO are set out in the preamble to the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO. The main ones are:raising living standards;ensuring full employment;constant growth of income and effective demand;expansion of production and trade in goods and services;optimal use of world resources in accordance with the goals of sustainable development;protection and preservation of the environment;ensuring for developing and least developed countries such participation in international trade that would meet the needs of their economic development.

The WTO has 164 members, of which 160 are states and 4 are customs territories. At the same time, 23 countries are in the process of negotiating accession to the WTO. Ukraine became a full member of the WTO on May 16, 2008

The essential functions of W. T. O are as follows:1. Administering and implementing the multilateral and plurilateral trade agreements. Providing the framework for the implementation, administration and operation of plurilateral trade agreements.2. To provide symposium for dialogues among members nations regarding multilateral trade relations in matters delineated in the agreements.3. Administering the understanding on rules and procedures governing the settlement of disputes.4. Seeking to resolve trade disputes.5. Overseeing national trade policies.6. Administering the trade review-mechanism in relation to international trade.7. Cooperating with international institutions such as IMF and IBRD and its affiliated agencies involved in global policy making.

The regular business of WTO is over seen by a General council. The General Council performs the following functions:1. Supervising the functioning of revised agreements, operations of the revised agreements and ministerial declarations related to goods and services, trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPs) on regular basis.2. Acting as a dispute settlement body.3. Serving as a trade review mechanism; and4. Establishing Goods councils, services councils and TRIPs councils as subsidiary bodies.