News

The governmental delegation under the guidance of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Evaldas Ignatavičius are to participate in WTO’s 4th Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, 9-13 November. Lithuania, as a full and equal member of the WTO since May 31 2001, participates in the process of decision-making and has an opportunity to defend her interests in trade. It should be noted that besides the traditional issues on trade liberalization the WTO is seeking to cover quite new issues on international trade. Those are competition and investment policies, transparency in government procurement, trade facilitation, relationship of trade and environment. Lithuania is mostly interested in agriculture policy – trade in agricultural products as well as support for agriculture. There is expected at the Conference to draw the negotiation guidelines and declare the new WTO negotiation round. The world negotiation rounds are part of the global process of trade liberalization, which is participated by almost 80 per cent of all the world countries. The negotiation rounds are of great importance for all the member countries, which is 142, to liberalize the world trade as well as to increase and strengthen the multilateral trade system.