Seemingly out of the blue, trade ministers, meeting just over a week ago in Bali, formally agreed for the first time in nearly 20 years, a new multilateral trade agreement. What was announced at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) gathering in Indonesia fell far short of the comprehensive trade round envisaged when the Doha Round negotiations were launched in 2001. However, it did address some of the easier to resolve trade liberalisation issues and propose that more difficult matters start to be addressed next year, possibly in new ways.
The final outcome in Bali, after five days of intense and sometimes overnight discussion, was an agreement on trade facilitation aimed at making cross-border commerce less subject to bureaucracy; declarations on four agricultural issues; and an agreement on a number of development focused provisions of relevance