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Policy Advice Program: LEBANON’s WTO accession
1. Background Shortly after independence in 1943, Lebanon acceded to the GATT as a founding member in 1947 and became a model for social and economic development in the Middle East. But the country could not participate to the Uruguay Round negotiations due to the civil war, which ravaged the country, destroying physical infrastructure and housing, displacing large portions of the population and weakening institutions. Lebanon has thus to negotiate its Accession to the WTO. The Accession to the WTO
is seen by the Lebanese government, together with the conclusion
of economic and trade agreements with their main partners, as a
mean to allow Lebanon to re-integrate the world economy and to increase
trade and investment with regional and global players. It is further
seen by the Government as a vehicle to modernize its partially outdated
economic and trade regimes, aiming at ensuring more competitive
and transparent behavior by the economic actors.
The overarching goal of the Program is to facilitate Lebanon’s re-integration into the Multilateral Trading System, as a mean to foster trade and investment with its regional and global partners. To this end, the Program is advising the Government with regard to the adequate measures in the economic and trade related fields to facilitate Lebanon’s successful accession to the WTO. In this regard, the advice provided strives to ensure that the inputs for the negotiations and the policy options towards the modernization of the economic and commercial measures are targetting a broad-based, inclusive economic and social development of Lebanon. In this regard, the Program advises the Government on how to prepare the negotiations on market access for goods, as well as for services, as well as with regard to the implemention of its obligations stemming from various WTO agreements.
3. Objectives Specifically, the Program aims at:
The Program consists of two main components with related activities; A Trade Policy Advice component, consisting of advice and analytical inputs (“backstopping”) to the government with regard to various aspects of WTO disciplines (e.g. market access for goods and services, agriculture, state trading, licensing, non tariff measures). Under this component, IDEAS will be specifically coaching the Ministry of Economy and Trade during the negotiation process. Specific Technical Assistance
components in sectors of key economic importance linked to the WTO
Accession process. Methodology: the exact scope of these components
will be defined with the MOET, to respond flexibly and rapidly to
specific needs, which will pop up during the Accession process.
This has been the case in Phase I of the Program in the sector of
Services, where IDEAS has been in a position to “fill a gap”
in a very short term. These components are executed by external
experts, but designed, monitored and coordinated by IDEAS Centre.
4. Contacts
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