JEDDAH, 27 February 2004 — Negotiations on Saudi Arabia’s bid for membership of the WTO are almost complete after talks in Geneva on Tuesday and yesterday, and observers now expect the Kingdom to join the organization as early as the middle of the year.
During the two days of meetings, bilateral agreements were signed with Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Thailand, Ecuador, Cuba, Sri Lanka and Poland. The Kingdom is also due to sign with India today, according to Fawaz Al-Alamy, deputy minister of commerce and industry for technical affairs and head of the Saudi technical team negotiating the country’s membership bid. He told Arab News that the Indian team had said yesterday that it was a “done deal”.
This brings to 30 the total of WTO members with which the Kingdom has signed agreements on trade in goods and services. Such agreements are a prerequisite before Saudi membership can be approved.
Negotiations with just five countries now need to be finalized — China, Panama, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States. However, Al-Alamy said he expected agreements to be signed with the first four “in the next couple of weeks”. He anticipated there would be just one more session of negotiations with the United States.
Negotiations on multilateral issues are also “more or less” complete, he said.
Responding to comments on the way the negotiation process had visibly speeded up over the past eight months, the deputy minister said that this was primarily due to economic reforms initiated by Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard. It was these changes that “really helped move the negotiations along,” he said.
After a meeting of the WTO working party studying the Kingdom’s bid for entry into the 146-member body, diplomats and officials said there was a clear mood among current WTO countries to complete the discussions — which must produce detailed agreements on the terms under which Saudi Arabia will be allowed to join — as quickly as possible.
The chairman of the working party, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York Munir Akram, told other envoys at the end of its Wednesday session that the process “is now approaching its final stages,” trade sources said.
The target was to conclude “by the middle of the year, perhaps before the (Northern Hemisphere) holiday season,” Akram added. The group would hold its next meeting in two months.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer, Russia and Ukraine are the three largest economies still not admitted to the WTO. All three opened talks in the mid-1990s.
Saudi Minister of Commerce and Industry Hashim Yamani said he was optimistic that the remaining agreements could be completed soon.
“The few gaps that remain are narrowing,” he said.
The minister said the Kingdom has finalized much of the requirements needed for economic reform and the restructuring of Saudi public enterprises as well as issuing many laws and regulations relating to the WTO agreements including intellectual property laws, import licenses, health measures, customs and the technical obstacles facing trade.
The Kingdom, he added, paved the way for foreign investment by providing a conducive atmosphere through the establishment of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), reducing tax on corporate profits to 20 percent from 45 percent and according foreign investment the same incentives enjoyed by Saudis.
Trade sources said there were outstanding problems over how far the Kingdom would open up to farm produce imports and what health regulations it would apply. Australia, Argentina, Canada and New Zealand had asked for a special meeting on these issues in parallel with the next session of the working party, they added.
