WTO urges members to share info on trade measures over Coronavirus
The DG asked members to provide the Secretariat with information about their Covid-19 policies with trade implications
Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Roberto Azevêdo has called for transparency with regard to trade-related policies introduced to fight coronavirus as the WTO ramps up monitoring of the Covid-19 pandemic's trade implications.
In a message on Tuesday asking all the members to submit information to the WTO Secretariat about recent trade and trade-related measures, DG Azevêdo called specific attention to the policies members had introduced in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
"The current Covid-19 pandemic represents an almost unprecedented health crisis, and members are understandably responding by introducing legislation and policies to seek to combat this health emergency," he wrote.
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"These include measures that are trade-related, such as export measures and economic support programmes."
The DG asked members to provide the Secretariat with information about their Covid-19 policies with trade implications, emphasising that whatever they submit would be used purely for transparency purposes.
The request was part of a longstanding transparency exercise in which the WTO Secretariat compiles regular reports on trade-facilitating and restricting measures introduced by members of the Group of 20 leading economies as well as by the WTO membership as a whole.
The next trade monitoring report will look at measures taken between mid-October 2019 and mid-May 2020, according to WTO.
The monitoring exercise has previously shone a spotlight on trade measures taken in the context of health emergencies, notably the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009-10.
In comments on the Covid-19 outbreak, DG Azevêdo has stressed the importance of transparency with regard to trade-related measures, arguing that it would be particularly useful for the many countries that rely on imports for medical supplies.
More broadly, the DG has set up a taskforce of experts from across the Secretariat to monitor the impact of Covid-19 on trade flows and the overall global economy.
Some of the taskforce's findings will inform the WTO's annual trade projections which will be released next month.
