Book Review: Ravi Ratnayake, Rajan Sudesh Ratna, Martina Francesca Ferracane and Yann Duval (Eds), Impacts of Trade Facilitation Measures on Poverty and Inclusive Growth: Case Studies from Asia
| Published date | 01 November 2015 |
| Author | Debashis Chakraborty |
| Date | 01 November 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0015732515598591 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Foreign Trade Review
50(4) 298–301
©2015 Indian Institute of
Foreign Trade
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0015732515598591
http://ftr.sagepub.com
Ravi Ratnayake, Rajan Sudesh Ratna, Martina Francesca Ferracane
and Yann Duval (Eds), Impacts of Trade Facilitation Measures on Poverty
and Inclusive Growth: Case Studies from Asia. Bangkok: Asia-Pacific
Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT), UNESCAP,
2013, 316 pp., ISBN 978-92-1-120676-0, eISBN 978-92-1-056641-4.
Completion of the Uruguay Round negotiations of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994 led to inception of World Trade Organization
(WTO) in 1995. While the resulting text successfully expanded the ambit of the
multilateral negotiations by including agriculture, services and intellectual prop-
erty rights, the impediments to trade and investment flows were far from being
extinct. In addition, the trade and investment patterns in 1986, when the Uruguay
Round negotiations were initiated, had undergone a sea change over the next dec-
ade. These developments led to certain corrective attempts in the next WTO
Ministerial Conference held at Singapore in 1996—one, by agreeing on trade in
information technology products and two, by discussing the possibility of including
four new areas of future reforms under the ambit of WTO, which became collec-
tively known as ‘Singapore Issues’. These new areas include, Trade Facilitation
(henceforth TF), Trade and Investment Measures, Transparency in Government
Procurement and Competition Policy.
While the importance of the Singapore Issues in freeing world trade and invest-
ment flows further has been recognized, differences over the timeline of including
newer areas in WTO reform agenda before full implementation of the Uruguay
Round commitments delayed the process. TF negotiations suffered from one
additional roadblock, lower-income countries initially feared that they may need
to undertake massive investments in infrastructure, which may facilitate imports
more vis-à-vis exports. In the post Cancun Ministerial (2003) period, it however
became...
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