Capacity building activities continue for Uzbekistan: experience sharing on the WTO accession process with the former chief negotiators from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Ukraine
25.05.2021 583
Uzbekistan continues to pursue its goal of becoming the Member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). To facilitate Uzbekistan in this path, the European Union project ‘Facilitating the process of Uzbekistan's accession to the WTO’ implemented by the International Trade Centre (ITC), has organized a series of 3 online experience sharing sessions with former chief negotiators on WTO accession from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Ukraine for Uzbekistan’s government officials.
The opening words made by ITC and the Ministry of Investments and Foreign Trade (MIFT) in these sessions were followed by the presentation of the best practices and approaches in the WTO accession negotiations made by Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Tajikistan. In particular, the participants discussed and exchanged recommendations on the following points:
- stages of multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral accession negotiations;
- regulatory reform process in the context of accession;
- preparation of documents required for WTO accession negotiations;
- participation of acceding governments in the Working Party Meetings at the WTO;
- best practices in ensuring transparent and effective inter-ministerial communication and institutional coordination for the formulation of constructive negotiation positions;
- lessons learnt from the experience of negotiating with certain WTO Members;
- best practice in cooperation with development agencies and receiving external technical assistance.
Through a direct and open dialogue with the former chief negotiators, Uzbekistan’s negotiators had a chance to discuss a variety of issues that acceding governments are facing on their way to the WTO Membership. This type of consultative assistance provided by WTO Members who had gone through the accession process (as per the process envisaged under Article XII) plays a crucial role in acquiring hands-on experience for Uzbekistan’s policymakers in deepening their understanding of the WTO accession process and in this regard to further the efforts of Uzbekistan to become a full-fledged Member state of the WTO.