Accession of Least Developed Countries to the WTO - WTO, Paper prepared for the 10th China Round Table, 18-20 January 2022

This paper has been prepared for the 10th China Round Table. It starts with a brief summary of the origins of the LDC group at the United Nations (UN). The initiative to establish LDCs as a country category responded to the conviction that there exists a group of low-income countries, among the poorest in the world, that would benefit from special attention and tailor-made treatment to manage their multifaceted development problems. The opportunities and challenges of international trade exert a significant influence on the growth and development prospects of developing countries, and it was not long after the 1971 UN decision that the GATT made room for a new approach to the world's poorest trading nations The paper then goes on to look in more detail at what WTO accession modalities involve and what the process implies for acceding parties, particularly the least developed countries. It traces the evolution of the WTO approach to LDC accessions, and discusses the steps required in what can be an arduous and long process. The paper summarizes some of the commitments undertaken by the nine LDCs who have acceded to the WTO under Article XII of the Marrakesh Agreement. The paper further discusses the post-accession phase facing new LDC WTO Members in terms of the challenges and opportunities associated with membership, as well as the importance of participating in WTO activities. It then briefly examines the economic performance of recently acceded LDC Members to see how they have fared. The authors are careful, however, not to assert direct causality between WTO membership and economic and policy outcomes, as many diverse influences are at work. Finally, the paper concludes with some suggestions and recommendations for those LDCs who are currently negotiating their WTO accessions or contemplating doing so.