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EU welcomes landmark WTO deal on IT product tariff cuts

Xinhua, December 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

The European Union (EU) applauded a trade deal that eliminates custom duties on 201 high-tech products among over five World Trade Organization (WTO) members on Thursday.

The 28-member bloc and another 23 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Wednesday have reached agreement on phasing out tariffs on imports of more than 200 information technology products at a WTO ministerial conference in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

The deal, initiated by the EU, extends the 1996 Information Technology Agreement (ITA) to cover 1.3 trillion euros in global trade. This makes it the biggest tariff-cutting deal in WTO in almost two decades.

"I warmly welcome the conclusion of this agreement," said EU Trade Commissioner Malmstrom.

"The conclusion of the revised ITA agreement shows that we can achieve global solutions that benefit all sides. This should add momentum to the multilateral World Trade Organization process happening now in Nairobi," the commissioner added.

The agreement will remove customs duties on a wide range of goods, including semi-conductors, medical equipment, game consoles and GPS devices, while respecting the sensitivity of those EU sectors that still require import tariffs such as TVs, certain monitors, projectors and non-digital car radios.

"This is great news for consumers, who should see the prices of their favourite electronic products fall. It should also give a boost to Europe's high-tech manufacturing sector. We expect the deal to give our entrepreneurs easier access to state-of-the-art technology and help them reach out to the overseas markets," Malmstrom said.

For every product on the list, ITA participants have negotiated the level of reductions and over how many years it will fully eliminate the tariffs.

As a result of these negotiations, about 65 percent of tariff lines will be fully eliminated by July 1, 2016. Most of the remaining tariff lines will be completely phased out in four stages over three years, meaning that by 2019 almost all imports of the relevant products will be duty-free, according to the WTO. Endit