The Central Department of WTO, at Trade Agreements and Foreign Trade sectors with the co-operation of the Secretariat of the World Trade Organization organized a workshop entitled "WTO Trade Facilitation National Self Assessment of Egypt’s Needs and Priorities" during the period from 13^th to 17^th January 2008.

Representatives from many of the agencies, authorities and stakeholders relevant to exports and imports procedures participated in the workshop, such as the Egyptian Customs Authority,  General Organization for Import and Export Control, the Ministry of Transport, Plant quarantine, Veterinary Quarantine, Ministry of Health, the Federation of Industries, Ministry of Civil Aviation, representatives from Chambers of industry, Chamber of Commerce.

With regard to the importance of the workshop objectives, Trade Agreements and Foreign Trade Sectors had submitted an official request for the World Trade Organization in order to convene a national workshop in Egypt. Noting that, there are 70 developing countries and least developed applied for holding such a workshop in their countries, and Egypt was first in the progress of this request. The secretariat of the WTO had welcomed to hold such workshop in Egypt.

It worth mentioning, that Customs Authority is not the only Authority that is responsible for the transit procedures and the release of the cargo. Therefore, other governmental agencies and authority's policy and procedures must be taken into consideration.

Recognizing the importance of workshop objective in assisting the developing and least developed countries in performing self-assessment of their needs and priorities concerning the technical assistance and capacity-building for the implementation of negotiating proposals, as well as, how to clarify and improve relevant articles of GATT 94 and to facilitate the procedures related to export and import. Egypt has emphasized that many of the proposed elements are already applied concerning facilitating the imports and exports procedures.