JEDDAH, 24 December 2003 — Saudi Arabia is in the advanced stages of negotiations with the United States and is looking to enact legislation bringing the Kingdom in line with the regulations and standards of the World Trade Organization, a Saudi official said yesterday.
“The Saudi-US negotiations are well advanced and are progressively achieving results which we believe are conducive to the WTO accession,” the AFP news agency quoted Fawaz Al-Alamy, deputy minister of commerce and industry and head of the negotiating team for the accession of Saudi Arabia to the WTO, as saying.
“Many rounds of meaningful and substantive negotiations have already taken place,” said Alamy, adding that the last round of negotiations was held in October 2003.
The deputy minister said he believed the upcoming negotiations on the pending issues would be “successful.”
“Most of the issues in the area of goods and services have been resolved. However, there are only a handful of issues in goods and services which we expect to resolve in the next round of bilateral negotiations. I can say that we are fairly close in our negotiations with the United States,” Alamy said.
Earlier this week the Kingdom announced it had signed seven bilateral agreements in its latest round of negotiations in Geneva between Dec. 8 to 19, bringing the number of such accords to 23.
So far Saudi Arabia has concluded bilateral agreements with Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Korea, Uruguay, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey, Venezuela, Czeck Republic, Slovak Republic, Poland, Latvia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, Taiwan, Paraguay and the European Union (EU). Further negotiations with other WTO members are set to resume next month to pave the way for the Kingdom to join the WTO.
“Negotiations with the remaining countries are well advanced. The main countries with which agreements have to be concluded include the United States, Switzerland, Norway, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka,” Alamy said.
He added that most of the multilateral issues have been resolved and discussions on the few remaining issues are at an advanced stage.
“We have made excellent progress and there is momentum building up ... We hope to join the WTO in the first half of 2004” he said.
Under WTO rules, a country wishing to join the organization must agree arrangements with its main trading partners on market access and cutting customs duties, which are subsequently widened to all other WTO members.
The candidate must then make a commitment to ensure its trade legislation complies with all WTO rules as the last step before actually becoming a member.
Asked if the Saudi government would enact new legislation, particularly relating to the sensitive topic of sole agency laws, Alamy said the country recognizes the requirements of accession and that new legislation would surface.
He highlighted that Saudi Arabia has already enacted 25 trade-related laws and regulations and is “in the process of enacting some more laws and regulations. We are also reviewing our existing laws, including the agency laws, to ensure their consistency with the WTO rules.”
The area of agency laws is a contentious one, with some in the Kingdom resisting the demise of a long-established system that grants certain merchants sole rights to serve as agents of foreign companies.
Saudi Arabia first applied to join the WTO’s predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), in 1993, which was turned into an application to join the WTO in 1995.