Vietnam’s WTO entry likely before November

Vietnam is likely to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) before the 14th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, scheduled for Hanoi in November, following achievements obtained at the 12th session of the Working Group on the country’s accession to the WTO in Geneva, Switzerland.

The view was shared by the Chairman of the Working Group and Vietnams partners to the session, who also underlined the need for Vietnam and other members of the group to coordinate closely to resolve existing problems.

Deputy Trade Minister Luong Van Tu headed the Vietnamese Government negotiation team to the July 19 session, which was also attended by Trade Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen.

On July 17-18, the Vietnamese negotiation team held informal sessions with many WTO members, including the US and the European Union. During this negotiation session, concerned parties focused on discussing each others viewpoints about existing issues, such as business rights on import and exports, investment regulations, export tariffs, special consumption tax on alcohol and intellectual property rights.

Related parties also spent time discussing bilateral agreements on the opening up of commodity and service markets.

Under the Prime Ministers thorough instructions, Vietnamese negotiators made careful preparations for this session, and conducted negotiations in an active, flexible and highly-determined manner.

Owing to the goodwill of partners at the negotiations, encouraging progress was made in many sectors and breakthroughs were recorded in several areas.

The Chairman and members of the Working Group and the Secretariat of the WTO made positive evaluations of the results of the 12th working session.

Though issues still remained, concerned parties agreed that negotiators’ viewpoints on many matters had come closer together. If work is intensified on a settlement, concerned parties can complete their multilateral negotiations at the next session of the Working Group, which is slated for the second half of September, 2006.

Addressing the session, Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen once again asserted Vietnams determination to join the WTO. He said that Vietnam has adapted its legal system to the WTOs standards, creating a legal base to conduct economic reform, maintain a dynamic economic development at a high rate, and integrate further into the world trade system.

(Source: VOV)

He added that Vietnams entry to the WTO would help to improve the efficiency in implementing laws, strengthen and intensify the local reform process, as well as, perfecting and expanding the multilateral trade system.

He called on WTO members to give more flexibility to Vietnam, which is developing at a low level and is in a transitional process, to help Vietnam seek solutions for existing problems, to translate their supports into concrete actions in the last session of negotiations, and to help the country access the WTO entry before the APEC meeting takes place in Hanoi this November.