On December 13, 2017, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ended their 11th Ministerial Conference (MC11) with the announcement by three proponent groups of new initiatives for talks on electronic commerce, investment facilitation and micro, small and medium-size enterprises (MSMEs):
- Electronic Commerce – 71 members will initiate “exploratory work towards future WTO negotiations on trade-related aspects of electronic commerce”;
- Investment Facilitation -- 70 members plan to “…pursue structured discussions with the aim of developing a multilateral framework on investment facilitation”;
- MSMEs – 87 members intend to “…create, mutilaterally, an Informal Working Group on MSMEs at the WTO that would be open to all members.”
The first meeting will be held in the first quarter of 2018.
The press release can be found here:
https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news17_e/minis_13dec17_e.htm
Additional information can be found here:
https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news17_e/mc11_13dec17_e.htm
