Why a Central Department to Deal with WTO Issues?

Egypt became a contracting party to the GATT in 1970 and has been a member of the World Trade Organization since June 30, 1995. During the Uruguay Round negotiations (1986-1994), which concluded with the establishment of the World Trade Organization, a Permanent National Committee for WTO Negotiations existed that coordinated the country's position. That experience has taught us that a complete and highly specialized central department, in collaboration with a national committee on negotiations, should coordinate these highly complex negotiations, follow-up on existing commitments, communicate with the public and private sectors to involve them in the negotiations process, and overall make sure that Egypt’s interests are promoted in the WTO.

Ministerial Decree No. 411 of 2002 officially created the Central Department of WTO Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Trade as the main coordinating body for all issues related to the WTO (click here for an overview of the WTO, including its mission, objectives, functions, and information about subjects handled by the organization). Since then, we have been hard at work, first to get organized so as to be able to handle the numerous topics covered by the WTO (including agriculture, services, non-agriculture market access, intellectual property rights, textiles and clothing, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, customs valuation, etc.) (CD/WTO structure) and second, to interact with the public and private sectors so as to formulate negotiating positions that reflect the views of all stakeholders and promote national interests. In this regard, the CD/WTO acts as the Secretariat to the High National Committee on the Doha Negotiations (HNC), which formulates the Egyptian position in all WTO negotiations.

The Doha Ministerial Conference in November 2001 launched a new round of negotiations, known as the Doha Development Agenda, which, among other things, set deadlines for the “built-in agenda” negotiations (agriculture and services), and launched negotiations in non-agricultural market access, and aspects of intellectual property rights, trade and environment, dispute settlement, WTO rules, etc.

Through this website, we hope to keep the Egyptian public aware of what the CD/WTO is doing to ensure that Egypt derives maximum benefit from its WTO membership. In doing so, we will try to make as much information as possible available in Arabic. For your convenience, we also provide information on the WTO itself (assembled from the WTO’s own website, which we highly encourage you to visit), existing information on Egypt’s participation in the WTO (e.g., schedules of commitments, trade policy reviews, disputes involving Egypt and notifications), as well as relevant links.

We encourage you to please provide us with your feedback, whether on CD/WTO activities or on the website itself, so that we may be able to serve the Egyptian public better.

Lastly, we would like to thank the WTO Secretariat for letting us borrow information from the WTO website and we would like to encourage all those interested in accessing further information on the WTO to please consult that website.

   Mission

The mission of the Central Department of WTO Affairs, located within the Trade Agreements Sector at the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Industry, is to provide leadership in coordinating and integrating all issues related to Egypt’s full and effective participation in the WTO, and in the process, derive maximum economic and social benefits for Egyptians. More ...