Keeping WTO relevant

Plurilateral agreements may be key to WTO's future

- AMITA BATRA

Earlier this month Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in her lecture at the London School of Economics, emphasised the need to speak up for the multilateral institution, particularly when the dominant funding economy has chosen to suppress its voice and relevance. Her statement augurs well for the WTO, which stands at a crossroads in terms of its fundamental processes and the objective of promoting freer and fairer trade. While there has been much talk about the United States blocking appointments to the Appellate Body of the Dispute Settlement Mechanism, the decline of the institution, in terms of both long-drawn negotiations and a lack of substantive outcomes, has long preceded this development.

It is well known that the expansion of membership of the WTO, from 23 founding members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), to 128 in 1994 when GATT transitioned to the WTO, to 166 in 2024, has not been without challenge. Consensus-based resolution of significant issues such as agricultural subsidies, non-agricultural market access, and services liberalisation has been hard to achieve, given the varied interests and sensitivities of developed, developing, and least-developed member countries.

The agreements on trade facilitation and, more recently, on fisheries subsidies were concluded after prolonged and difficult negotiations, each stretching over more than a decade. While a persistent negotiating impasse on major issues has resulted in the WTO's first and only trade liberalisation "round", the Doha Development Agenda, being effectively suspended, most ministerial meetings have ended up with only administrative decisions related to the implementation of earlier agreements. The rules and provisions at the WTO have hence undergone limited, if any, evolution beyond what was achieved in the last round of GATT.