WTO urges Azerbaijan to step up bilateral talks with members

By Azernews

By Amina Nazarli

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has urged Azerbaijan to strengthen its work with member countries of the organization to ensure mutual access to markets for goods and services.

The next stage of negotiations on Azerbaijan's accession to the WTO was held on July 28 within the framework of the visit of Azerbaijani’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev to Geneva.

At the meeting, the chair of the WTO’s working party on the accession of Azerbaijan, Ambassador Walter Werner called on Azerbaijan to “proactively engage and advance market access negotiations” with members and to focus in particular on bilateral market access talks, whose progress, in his view, has fallen behind other areas of the accession negotiations.  

Mammad-Guliyev said that Azerbaijani government intended to “concentrate on the bilateral”, which he acknowledged as “one of the weak parts of our accession process”, as well as implement the legal reforms necessary to bring its domestic trading regime in line with WTO requirements.

The Deputy Minister noted that Azerbaijan had undertaken a number of reforms over the past six months, including adopting 12 Strategic Roadmaps for the development of the country’s economy, as well as regulations covering trade facilitation and the improvement of trade and logistic infrastructure.

He noted that implementation of the Roadmaps by 2020 would serve as a “foundation” towards successful accession to the WTO.

In addition to advancing the bilateral market access negotiations, the chair asked the WTO Secretariat to prepare a revised draft working party report based on new inputs received from Azerbaijan, and for Azerbaijan to submit an updated and revised legislative action plan along with copies of newly enacted legislation. 

The chair added that the date for the next working party meeting would be fixed once these new inputs are received.

Azerbaijan applied for WTO membership in June 1997, with the working party having held 14 meetings since its establishment in July 1997. The chair recognized the efforts that Azerbaijan had put into the working party process in the 20 years since that establishment.

Azerbaijan launched negotiations with the WTO member states in 2004 and currently, in talks with 13 countries to finalize its accession process.