Case Studies

This paper focuses on showing how Viet Nam will meet its trading partners’ expectations that it will liberalize its economy through commercial legislation and regulatory changes and, more specifically, will liberalize its financial institutions and markets by the time of the country’s planned accession to the WTO in 2005.

More

The significant changes experienced by Venezuela in recent years have had an important impact on the structure and the position it has adopted in trade negotiations, especially in agricultural negotiations. These changes can be classified in three major areas: political, constitutional and institutional.

More

Vanuatu began its WTO accession process in July 1995, and the main momentum towards membership came in 1997 with the advent of a structural adjustment package known as the Comprehensive Reform Programme (CRP). This set of reforms aimed to improve governance, enhance the role of the private sector, increase economic growth and further liberalize the economy. As part of this last process the programme was directed at reducing trade barriers within the context of WTO membership. The import-substitution policy, followed since independence in 1980, was failing. The economy was generally closed, while Vanuatu had always run a visible trade deficit; some policy-makers and politicians felt that the economy should integrate more into the global economy.

More

Uruguay is a small South American country lying between Brazil and Argentina. In relation to the rest of the continent, it is a small country with a land surface of approximately 176,000 sq km; it is also small in demographic terms — its population is only 3 million — and in economic terms — gross domestic product (GDP) in 1998 was around US$23 billion. However, Uruguayan society enjoys high social integration and low levels of inequality.

More

Trade negotiations vary in scope and content but generally depend on the structure of the economy of a particular country. Uganda, like many other developing countries, is trying to diversify away from traditional exports; the trade negotiations in which it is involved are therefore aimed at securing markets for new products (namely tea, tobacco and cotton), in addition to markets for the traditional exports. Trade negotiations are also aimed at obtaining the co-operation of trading partners on the technical and financial assistance required to meet market preferences and to comply with health and technical standards as well as other customs or entry requirements.

More

Tuna is arguably one of the most well-known and abundant of fish, found in large quantities at supermarkets and convenience stores around the world. It is such a popular sight in its canned form that one may have even dissociated it from its origins as a fish, until reminded of the amusing slogan-cum-brand, ‘chicken of the sea’. As such, it is safe to say that tuna enjoys as much popularity among consumers as the humble and ubiquitous chicken.

More

The telecommunications industry’s potential for prompting socio-economic growth has spurred massive changes in telecommunications sectors the world over; Sri Lanka has followed this path, and ever since the mid-1990s the industry has inched towards liberalization. As in several other developing countries, Sri Lanka liberalized the domestic segment of its telecommunications market before introducing competition in international telephony. In addition, liberalization and the setting up of a regulatory body preceded the partial privatization of the incumbent operator.

More

This case study examines the development and reform of South Africa’s anti-dumping regime as an example of a country’s participation in the WTO. The long history of the use of trade remedies by South Africa illustrates the fact that developing countries can successfully participate in the global trading system. By using the WTO’s Anti-dumping Agreement (ADA) as a model for its own anti-dumping system, South Africa also serves as an example of how a country can make use of WTO instruments to ensure that its domestic legislation is complying with its international obligations.

More

This study describes the challenges faced by customs officials in the Philippines when they adopted transaction valuation to facilitate imports, and the way in which they overcame these challenges. The Philippines government needed to adopt its international treaty obligations into domestic law, and it did that with two laws. It enacted Republic Act (RA) 8181 in 1997, which enabled transaction valuation reform. However, various obstacles hindered the implementation of this law, and so in 2001 the government adopted RA 9135 to fix the problem in RA 8181 so as to authorize post-entry audit systems.

More

Agriculture is a major contributor to the Philippines economy, accounting for 21.5% of its gross domestic product (GDP), generating exports valued at over US$1.5 billion, and providing one third of all employment, or 11 million jobs. Its contribution increases when ‘all economic activities related to agro-processing and supply of non-farm agricultural inputs are included, (as) the agricultural sector broadly defined accounts for about two-thirds of the labour force and 40% of GDP’. The strategic importance of this sector makes it compelling for the government to enact a stakeholder-based process that will fully and effectively render legitimacy not only to its domestic economic policies but to its international economic commitments as well, such as to the WTO.

More