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WTO Work Programme on E-Commerce
The past decade has witnessed a paradigm shift in technological inventions ameliorating different parts of a person’s everyday-life of which E-commerce is pre-eminent. Electronic commerce has been defined by the WTO as the "production, distribution, marketing, sale or delivery of goods and services by electronic means". An e?commerce transaction can be between enterprises, households, individuals, governments and other public or private organizations. Given the convenience of it, these advancements are not without technological disruption, leading to a number of challenges faced by both the buyer and the seller.
The Declaration on Global Electronic Commerce adopted by WTO’s Second Mistrial Conference in May, 1998 suggested that an elaborate work programme be brought into place in order to unravel various issues involved in global E-commerce transactions. The work programme was adopted by the WTO General Council on 25 September, 1998. WTO bodies such as the Council on Trade in Goods, the Council on Trade in Services, the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Council and the Committee on Trade and Development were given instructions to explore trade-related issues and synchronize the present WTO agreements to that of E-commerce. The issues covered by the work programme includes market research, profitability, inventory, logistic challenges, legal barriers, working capital, online identity verification, competitor analysis, data security and privacy, prevention of fraud, enforcement of intellectual property laws etc. The program also focuses on opportunities provided by E-commerce to developing and under-developed countries.
The General Council is deemed to pay a central role in the work program and has been assigned the following duties:
- To review the work programme time and again through agendas
- It shall consider and bring to notice any converging trade-related issue
- Examination of all aspects related to imposition of customs duties on electronic transmission
- Conduct an interim review of progress in the implementation of the work programme
Recent Developments
At the Buenos Aires Ministerial Conference in December 2017, WTO members adopted a decision on the Work Programme on E-commerce. This included an agreement to extend the moratorium on e-commerce and to reinvigorate their work and instruct the General Council to hold periodic reviews in its sessions of July and December 2018 and July 2019 based on the reports submitted by the relevant WTO bodies and report to the next session of the Ministerial Conference.
They agreed to maintain the current practice of not imposing customs duties on electronic transmissions until the next session held in 2019.The agreement to host the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan was signed on October 30th, 2019 and is schedules to be held on June 8th to 12th, 2020.
