The WTO has published its 2016 Annual Report covering the organization’s activities in 2015 and early 2016.

The Report begins with a message from Director-General Roberto Azevêdo, who looks back at a memorable year for the WTO marked by the organization’s 20-year anniversary and the successful conclusion of the WTO’s Tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi.

The opening section of the Report provides a brief overview of the past year, focusing on the WTO's major areas of activity. The second part provides more in-depth accounts of the WTO's work, covering trade negotiations, implementation of WTO agreements, trade monitoring, dispute settlement, support for developing countries and outreach activity.

The Report includes a special focus on the major events of 2015: the 20th anniversary of the WTO; the Nairobi Ministerial Conference; the Fifth Global Review of Aid for Trade; the 2015 Public Forum; and the WTO’s Open Day.

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Message from Director-General Roberto Azevêdo

Surely few years in the history of the WTO can have been as memorable as 2015. Not only did we mark the organization’s 20 year anniversary, we also ended the year with the successful conclusion of our Tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, where a number of historic agreements were reached.

The “Nairobi Package” consists of six ministerial decisions covering agriculture, cotton and issues of specific interest to least-developed countries (LDCs). It includes a landmark commitment to abolish subsidies for farm exports, which is the most important reform of international trade rules in agriculture since the WTO was founded. Farmers and exporters in developing countries will benefit in particular from this decision.

Developing countries will also benefit from the other decisions taken in Nairobi. These include a commitment by WTO members to find a permanent solution on rules for the stockpiling of staple food crops for food security purposes, and a commitment to develop a special safeguard mechanism for developing countries. For LDCs, ministers agreed steps to support their integration into the global economy, including granting preferential treatment to LDC services providers. In addition, members agreed measures to help low-income cotton producers access new markets.

The conference also saw the conclusion of a landmark deal to expand the WTO’s Information Technology Agreement, eliminating tariffs on 201 additional IT products with annual trade valued at over US$ 1.3 trillion.

The success of the Nairobi Ministerial Conference comes hot on the heels of our successful Ministerial Conference in Bali in December 2013, where ministers approved the Trade Facilitation Agreement as part of the “Bali Package” of measures. It has been estimated that, once implemented, this new agreement could increase global merchandise exports by up to US$ 1 trillion per annum by reducing transit times and slashing trade costs by nearly 15% on average.

The Trade Facilitation Agreement will enter into force once two-thirds of WTO members have ratified it. We are seeing significant progress in reaching this target. By April 2016, 77 WTO members had ratified the Agreement and presented their country’s instrument of acceptance to the WTO.

We are also making good progress on the protocol amending the WTO’s intellectual property (TRIPS) agreement. In 2015, ten more WTO members accepted the protocol, which aims to make it easier for the WTO’s poorest members to access affordable medicines. Again, the protocol will come into force once two-thirds of WTO members have ratified the amendment. We are now very close to this target.

Another successful outcome of the Nairobi conference was the approval of the WTO membership packages for Liberia and Afghanistan. Both countries have experienced troubled times recently so I am delighted to see them embracing membership of the WTO as a way of achieving greater stability and economic growth in the future. It was a pleasure to mark these momentous occasions by sharing the podium in Nairobi with Liberia’s President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and the First Deputy Chief Executive of Afghanistan, Mohammad Khan Rahmani.

I was also delighted to see the Seychelles and Kazakhstan officially join the WTO last year. Seychelles becomes the latest small island developing state to join the organisation while the arrival of Kazakhstan, with its population of 27 million, brings another major economy into the WTO family.

One of the most memorable features of the Nairobi conference was the generosity of our Kenyan hosts. I was honoured to be joined at the opening ceremony by Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta, and the Conference itself was ably chaired by Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Amina Mohamed. The meeting was an historic occasion in its own right as it was the first WTO ministerial conference to be held on African soil.

While the Nairobi conference was a success in many ways, it has also presented the WTO with some challenges. The Ministerial Declaration issued at the end of the conference acknowledges that WTO members “have different views” on the future of the Doha Round negotiations. Although there is a strong commitment by all members to advance negotiations on the remaining Doha issues, there was no consensus on how that should be done. Moreover, the declaration notes that some members may also wish to take up issues outside the Doha mandate. Members must face up to these fundamental divisions on our negotiating agenda and decide how to move forward.

Despite these differences the overriding message of Nairobi, as our second successful ministerial conference in two years, is that the WTO can deliver very significant negotiated outcomes – and the clear message I am receiving from our members is that they want to keep delivering in the years to come. Indeed, I am now encountering levels of interest in and optimism about our work which surpass anything that I have seen for a very long time.

While the negotiating agenda attracts a lot of attention, we should also maintain a spotlight on what we are achieving in other areas of our work. In 2015, the WTO reached the significant milestone of our 500th trade dispute, demonstrating members’ continuing confidence in the dispute settlement system. In recent years, the breadth and complexity of disputes brought to the WTO have increased immeasurably, placing a strain on our existing resources. To ensure the system remains one of the most efficient in the world, I have made some internal reforms to ensure that it has the resources needed to keep delivering to the standard that members expect.

In addition, we continue our work on monitoring countries’ trade policies. By the end of 2015, 151 of the WTO’s 162 members had undergone an in-depth review of their trade policies and practices. For the membership as a whole, our latest trade monitoring report has revealed that the stockpile of trade restrictions introduced by WTO members since 2008 continues to grow. Only 20 per cent of the restrictions put in place have been rolled back so the pace of removal of these measures needs to be accelerated. This is an area where continued vigilance and action will be required in 2016.

We also continue to work to build the trading capacity of our developing country members. In 2015, we undertook over 300 training activities and helped almost 15,000 participants gain a better understanding of WTO agreements and the multilateral trading system. We also marked the launch of phase two of the Enhanced Integrated Framework – ensuring that it can continue to deliver essential practical support to LDCs.

The WTO’s Aid for Trade initiative continues to help developing countries participate more effectively in global trade. According to the latest available figures, WTO members’ commitments to this initiative increased by US$ 1.8 billion compared with the previous year. The Fifth Global Review of Aid for Trade, which took place at the WTO in July 2015, highlighted the important role the initiative can play in helping the international community attain the Sustainable Development Goals recently launched by the United Nations. Through the Nairobi decision to abolish agricultural export subsidies, we have already delivered on a key target of the second Sustainable Development Goal, entitled “Zero Hunger”.

It is fitting that an anniversary year should record some major achievements and begin to set a path for the future. In this sense, 2015 delivered. It was an historic year for the WTO in many ways and it has provided the momentum for us to deliver many more historic achievements in the years to come in the service of growth, development and job creation around the world.

» Download: WTO Annual Report 2016 (PDF, 9.24 MB)