Worldwide Coalition Calls for

WTO Policy Agenda to Enhance

Growth of E-Commerce

The World Trade Organization is firmly grounded on the widely accepted idea that  barrier-free trade is a win-win proposition for all trading nations.

The open multilateral trading system embodied in the WTO Agreements—its system of rules, market access commitments, enforcement through the dispute settlement system and its commitment to ongoing negotiations and liberalization — works to ensure that every country can export goods and services in a fair global market environment and use the proceeds to pay for imports of goods and services produced by other countries.

Barrier-free trade produces specific benefits: higher wages and levels of employment; increases in economic growth and national incomes; lower prices and expanded consumer choice; and improvements in productivity and competitiveness.

International trade is dynamic — changing as technology evolves, skills and education levels improve, and economies become more diverse and competitive.

E-commerce is the most recent manifestation of the dynamic nature of trade: a significant and logical evolutionary step in how international trade occurs. Today, e-commerce is transforming the international trade landscape.  Experts predict that e-commerce will generate worldwide more than  $4 trillion in sales in the year 2003.  Because this development has such potential to benefit economic growth and living standards around the world, it is imperative that the WTO support barrier-free e-commerce and that WTO rules and disciplines are applied, and where necessary adapted, to ensure that result.

To support, nurture and promote this evolution, we urge WTO Trade Ministers in Seattle to:

1.       Make permanent and binding the May 20, 1998 Moratorium on Customs Duties on Electronic Transmissions.

2.       Affirm that current WTO obligations, rules, disciplines and commitments made under GATT, GATS and TRIPS apply to electronic commerce, including:

·         National treatment/non-discrimination

·         Most Favored Nation

·         Transparency, including with respect to domestic regulation

·         Notification, review, and consultation

3.       Agree to extend technical expertise to developing countries to ensure their full participation in the benefits of e-commerce.

4.       Agree to resist premature efforts to categorize electronic transmissions for trade-related purposes.

5.       Agree to refrain from enacting measures that have the effect of impeding, actually or potentially, international e-commerce.

6.       Agree that, when governments find it necessary to enact measures that may impede or threaten to impede international e-commerce, the measures adopted will be the least trade-restrictive means available.

7.       Agree to expand market access commitments for all modes of services delivery, particularly for cross-border and consumption abroad commitments (Mode 1 and Mode 2) in all sectors to further facilitate the growth and development of electronic commerce.

8.       Adopt and fully implement the Information Technology Agreement, the WTO agreement on financial services, and the WTO Agreement on Basic Telecommunications as well as the reference paper on an accelerated basis as a fundamental step to expand the benefits of electronic commerce.

9.       Continue the WTO Work Program on Electronic Commerce inter alia to identify, reduce and eliminate barriers to international electronic commerce.

List of Supporters

WTO Work Program to Promote E-Commerce

America Online

Asociacion de Epresas de TI Servicios (AETIS)

AT&T

Business Software Alliance

Corporacion Ecuatoriana de Comercio Electronico (CORPECE)

EDS Corp.

European Publishers Association (EPC)

Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC)

Hewlett Packard Company

IBM Corporation

International Chamber of Commerce

Information Technology Association of America

Information Technology Industry Council

Microsoft Corporation

National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade

Oracle Corporation

Software and Information Industry Association

Teledesic

Unites States Council for International Business

World Information Technology and Services Alliance