Vietnam's WTO Accession: Revised Working Party Report " ... in the next few weeks or months."

The WTO Working Party of over 40 WTO members (counting the EU as one) will accelerate its discussions with Viet Nam with the aim of producing a revised report in the next few weeks or months.

No date has been set for the next meeting.

Bilateral market access negotiations

The only remaining agreements are with the United States and Mexico, said Viet Nam’s Trade Vice-Minister and chief negotiator Luong Van Tu.

The US agreed that there had been “substantial progress”. Mexico also confirmed that it only had a few minor differences left in its bilateral talks with Viet Nam.

Multilateral issues: the rules

The bilateral market access talks are only part of the picture. The working party also has to agree on a report covering the new member’s actions, obligations and commitments under all WTO agreements. A second revision of the draft report was circulated on 21 February, and the working party spent most of this meeting going through the latest draft section by section.

Several commented that the draft will need further revisions because over 20 laws were passed in June, November and December 2005, with a number awaiting approval later this year. They also had questions on the implementation of several of these laws for example the impact on subsidies, foreign ownership of banks, export requirements for investors, and the timetable for regulations to implement the new intellectual property law.

Viet Nam asked for two sections of the draft report to be removed: textiles and core labour standards. The textiles agreement has expired and labour is not a WTO issue, Viet Nam said. One member said it wants the two sections to remain. Both sections are purely descriptions of the situation but contain important information for concluding the membership negotiation, it said.

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