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Ethiopia’s Progress to WTO Membership Slow

Ethiopia’s progress towards World Trade Organization membership has been a slow and costly process said Geremew Ayalew, Director of Foreign Trade Relation and Negotiation Directorate, with Ministry of Trade. The accession process is taking time and is costing Ethiopia a lot explained Geremew.

The Ethiopian team responsible for the accession process has prepared responses to the third round of questions presented by member states of WTO according to Geremew. The round consists of an estimated 134 questions primarily dealing with economic issues he said.

WTO members raise questions related with customs, service trade, intellectual property rights amongst others to which the Ethiopian team is expected to react said Geremew.

Ethiopia received 197 questions in the first round and 144 in the second he said.

Ethiopia may be required to privatize and open up the banking, power and telecom industries as part of the accession processes according to experts.

The questions so far, however, have been directed at Ethiopia’s general rules and regulations in relation to trade activities said Geremew.The process is expected to become more challenging during the bilateral negotiations stage.

The technical committee has completed the offer to be presented to the national steering committee for approval to commence bilateral negotiations

In related news the first Reference Center, expected to serves as a centralized source of data on the WTO accession process, was inaugurated last week. It is expected that the center will serve as a training and resource center for researchers and other experts.

The 800,000 birr to fund the center was financed by the USAID Accession Plus project.The inaugural event was attended by Mekonnen Manyazewal, Minister of Industry and Head of Ethiopia’s WTO accession process Yakob Yala, State Minister of Trade, and Yohannes Assefa, chief of party for USAID’s WTO Accession Plus project.
Source: The Reporter.