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The Doha Development
Agenda (DDA) places development at the heart of WTO negotiations. It was
adopted in 2001 at the WTO Ministerial Meeting held in Doha (Qatar).
The DDA provides developing and transition countries with the
opportunity to shape new rules for international trade within a context
favourable to their own development needs and interests. It commits
developed countries to providing programmes of trade-related technical
assistance (TRTA) and institutional capacity-building to help developing
and transition economies defend their national interests during
negotiations and take advantage of new trade opportunities.
Within the DDA, ITC places emphasis on helping government and business
in developing and transition economies work together to define jointly
the negotiating parameters and positions likely to extract the most
advantageous terms and conditions for their national economies during
the process of trade liberalisation.
DDA negotiations focus on:
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Agriculture:
substantially improve market access;
reduce all forms of export subsidies, with a view to phasing them out;
and substantially reduce trade-distorting domestic support.
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Services:
further liberalize all categories
of services and modes of supply.
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Industrial Goods (NAMA):
further reduce tariffs, including tariff peaks, high tariffs, and tariff
escalation, as well as non-tariff barriers, particularly on products of
export interest to developing countries. |
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Trade Remedies:
Antidumping measures subsidies and
countervailing measures: clarify and improve disciplines, while
preserving the basic concepts, principles, and effectiveness of these
agreements and their instruments and objectives.
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Regional Trade Agreements:
clarify and improve disciplines and
procedures under existing WTO rules applying to regional trading
agreements.
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TRIPS:
establish a multilateral system of
notification and registration of geographical indications for wines and
spirits.
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Dispute Settlement Mechanism:
improve the implementation of rulings and participation of developing
countries.
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Environment:
negotiations limited to the relationship
between existing WTO rules and specific trade obligations set out in
multilateral environmental agreements and to the reduction or
elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to environmental goods and
services.
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Trade
Facilitation:
negotiations launched in July 2004
(the
July Package)
with the
view to further expediting the movement, release and clearance of goods,
including goods in transit. The negotiations are an integral part of the DDA.
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