The Arab Republic of Egypt acceded to the World Trade Organization and signed, as well, the agreements included in the Final Act of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, on 1/5/1995. Presidential Decree No. 72 of 1995 was issued on the approval of Egypt's accession to these agreements. Subsequently, Ministerial Decree No. 381 of 1995 was issued establishing the Central Department for International Trade Policies (CD/ITP).

Pursuant to that accession, Egypt committed to liberalize its foreign trade and apply the international WTO rules regulating world trade policy for the purpose of opening markets and restricting countries from implementing administrative and quantitative restrictions to curb imports or to protect domestic industry. These agreements lay down the rules that govern free competition.

These agreements also include the permissible mechanisms for protecting domestic industry from unfair practices in international trade, which in turn affects fair competition. These mechanisms are represented policies on dumping, and safeguards and quantities of imports. 

The World Trade Organization encompasses three agreements that regulate and specify methods and procedures of protection against unfair practices in international trade, i.e., the Anti-Dumping Agreement, the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement and the Safeguards Agreement.

These agreements are of great importance to the domestic industry as they provide protection against practices of dumping, subsidy and significant increases in imports because they act as the only way to protect domestic industry under the World Trade Organization.

Since these agreements became an integral part of Egyptian Law, a new unit was established, namely the Central Department of International Trade Policies (Anti-dumping, Subsidy and Safeguard Department) to follow the process of implementing the above-mentioned agreements in Egypt.

The establishment of this unit was a matter of great importance as the implementation of these agreements requires special technical and legal expertise to ensure the unit's independency and status, as well as to deal in an objective manner with other parties (domestic producers, importers, exporters or Egyptian consumers, in addition to the governments of concerned countries).

It is worth mentioning that the implementation of these regulations to counter dumping, subsidies or significant increases in imports is not new to the world community, as these regulations were implemented by many countries 30 years earlier. Egypt started to implement these regulations by issuing Law No. 161 of 1998 on 11/6/1998 concerning the protection of the national economy from injurious effects of unfair practices in international trade. The regulation of that law was issued by the Ministerial Decree No. 549 of 1998 on 24/10/1998 and it was issued in the Official Gazette Issue No. 241 (supplementary) on 24/10/1998.

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