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Seminar on WTO TRIMs Agreement Implementation Opens
A seminar on implementation of the WTO's Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) Agreement opened in the coastal city of Xiamen in east China's Fujian province Sunday.
Representatives from China, the United States, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru and Papua New Guinea, took part in the seminar organized by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC).
The seminar, with the theme of Capacity Building for a Better Investment Environment, is designed to discuss problems APEC members have encountered in implementing the WTO TRIMs Agreement.
The TRIMs Agreement came into force with the establishment of the WTO in 1995. It was negotiated early in the course of the Uruguay Round.
It is based on existing GATT disciplines on trade in goods. But the TRIMs Agreement requires members not to apply any TRIM that is inconsistent with the principle of national treatment. Members were required to notify their TRIMs within 90 days after entry into force of the WTO Agreement. Developing countries have five years to remove those notified measures.
Ma Xiuhong, MOFTEC assistant minister, said at the seminar that some WTO members, including APEC members, have faced difficulties while implementing the TRIMs Agreement and asked for postpone of deadlines. The issue has caught attention of the WTO General Council. She said that it would be very useful to frankly discuss issues such as the relationship between implementation of TRIMs Agreement and developing members' goals of development, finance and trade, as the globalization tendency and transnational investment grow stronger and a new round of WTO negotiation would probably be initiated this year.
China has revised its basic laws on foreign investment in accordance to the WTO principle of national treatment and relevant requirements of the TRIMs Agreement. It is still working on revising or abolishing the existing rules and regulations to adapt to international practice.
Ma said that the move to join WTO shows that China actively participates in the process of economic globalization, and international competition and cooperation. China hopes to better fulfill what it has pledged by learning from some WTO members' experiences, she said.
Participants of the seminar are scheduled to introduce and exchange application of TRIMs agreement and its implementation in their countries at the two-day meeting.
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