English
ACCESSION OF LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES TO THE WTO
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
A paper prepared for the Tenth China Round Table, 18-20 January 2022[1]
Table of contents
1 INTRODUCTION.. 3
2 BACKGROUND.. 3
2.1 Least developed countries (LDCs) and the United Nations. 3
2.2 Least developed countries and the GATT/WTO.. 5
3 ACCESSION OF LDCs TO THE WTO: POLITICAL CONTEXT. 6
3.1 Ministerial Conference and General Council 6
3.2 Sub-Committee on Least-Developed Countries. 8
3.3 China's LDCs and Accessions Programme. 9
3.4 g7+ WTO Accessions Group and Trade for Peace. 10
4 ACCESSION PROCESS. 11
4.1 Rules-related commitments. 14
4.2 Market access commitments. 15
5 POST-ACCESSION IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES. 18
5.1 Key elements accompanying a post-accession strategy. 18
6 PARTICIPATING IN THE work of the WTO.. 19
7 ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE IN ARTICLE XII LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES. 26
8 LESSONS LEARNED AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACCEDING COUNTRIES. 30
8.1 Pre-accession and the negotiations. 30
8.2 Post-accession. 32
9 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 33
Annex 1. 35
Annex 2. 36
[1] Unless otherwise specified, this paper takes account of developments until 31 January 2022.