TFA helps to promote global trade: WTO report

WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) has the potential to increase global merchandise exports by up to 1 trillion U.S. dollars every year, according to the WTO's World Trade Report 2015 released here Monday.

The report estimated that over the 2015-2030 horizon, implementation of the TFA would add around 2.7 percent per year to world export growth and more than a half percent per year to world GDP growth.

The report "provides new evidence of the significant boost that the agreement will provide by expanding world trade, reducing costs and helping developing and least-developed countries to integrate into an increasingly globalized production system," said WTO's director-general Roberto Azevedo, in marking the launch of the report.

The report also noted that developing countries in particular stand to gain from swift and full implementation of the TFA. In addition to boosting world trade and output, the FTA is expected to help developing countries diversify their exports, by increasing the number of products exported per destination as well as the number of markets per product.

Meanwhile, by improving timeliness and predictability in the delivery of intermediate goods, the TFA should increase the opportunity for implementing developing countries to participate in global value chains, added the report.

The TFA was agreed by WTO members at a ministerial conference in Bali in December 2013. It was the first multilateral agreement successfully negotiated at the WTO.

The 2015 World Trade Report is the first major study since the agreement was reached in Bali to examine its economic implications in full. The aim of this report is to provide a fresh, rigorous analysis based on a clause-by-clause study of the final agreement text. Endit