The twelfth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will be held in Geneva, Switzerland from 12 to 15 June. Earlier, the conference was scheduled to be held in December last year, but it was postponed due to the rising outbreak of COVID-19.
In a letter to WTO members on Monday (25 April), the organisation’s Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Chair Ambassador of Swiss General Council Didier Chambovey said that the 12th WTO ministerial conference would be held from 12 to 15 June in Geneva at the WTO headquarters.
Director-General of WTO cell of the Ministry of Commerce Md. Hafizur Rahman told the media on Tuesday (24 April) that all preparations had been made by Bangladesh when the ministerial conference was scheduled to be held last December. We are still prepared that way.
He said, ‘Apart from maintaining subsidies in the fisheries sector, we are also giving utmost importance to the issue of LDC graduation. We will strive to ensure that the priority trade benefits we now enjoy remain in place even after the LDC graduation.’
He thinks that this year’s conference is likely to be impacted by the Russia-Ukraine war. Therefore, Bangladesh is giving extra importance to this conference of the highest policy-making forum of the WTO.
Hafizur Rahman said, ‘The meeting of the General Assembly of the WTO will be held on 10 May. The issues discussed here will be closely monitored and we will make some more preparations in the light of that.’ He said Bangladesh would propose reforms to WTO on behalf of the LDC group.
A government delegation led by Bangladesh’s Minister of Commerce Tipu Munshi is scheduled to attend the conference. Currently, 164 countries are members of the WTO. Bangladesh is the most influential country in the LDC group of the organisation. This year’s conference is very important for Bangladesh as it is in the transition stage from LDC.
The ministerial conference is the highest policy-making forum of the World Trade Organization, which is held after every two years. The last conference was held in 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The conference was not held in 2019. The conference was announced to be held in Kazakhstan in June 2020. But in the end, due to the second wave of the COVID-19 outbreak, the conference was rescheduled for 30 November to 3 December in Geneva at the WTO headquarters. After taking full preparations for the program, it had to be postponed again due to Omicron.
