After 17 rounds of negotiations, on Saturday 18 July 2015, negotiators were about to agree on a list of products for an expansion of the ITA and a draft declaration on how the agreement will be implemented. India`s experience with the ITA has been very discouraging, which has almost wiped out India`s IT industry. The real winner of this agreement was China, which increased its global market share from 2% to 14% between 2000 and 2011. The ITA is a plurilateral trade agreement that obliges participants to abolish their tariffs on a specific list of information technology (IT) and telecommunications products. The lists of products covered by the ITA are listed below: The objective of the contract is to reduce to zero all taxes and duties on its products of the signatories. [2] Figure 5 Extension of the ITA: Application of the Most-Favoured-Nation Tariff to Goods Covered by the Agreement The publication describes how this Agreement has developed over the past two decades and what significant impact it has had on global trade in information technology products. Decisions of WTO bodies on the Information Technology Agreement are contained in the Guide to the Analytical Index to WTO Law and Practice. Under the terms of the agreement, the majority of tariffs on the 201 products will be eliminated within three years, with reductions from 2016. By the end of October 2015, each of the participating members will provide the other participants with a timetable outlining how the terms of the agreement are to be respected. Participants will spend the next few months preparing and revising these schedules. The aim is to complete this technical work in time for the Nairobi Ministerial Conference in December.
Today, following the recent accession of the Republic of Seychelles, the ITA now has 81 WTO members, representing about 97 per cent of world trade in information technology products. The World Trade Organization has passed an agreement under the “Information Technology Agreement” to reduce all taxes and tariffs on the signatories` computer products to zero. It entered into force on 1 July 1997. The ITA covers a large number of high-tech products, including computers, telecommunications equipment, semiconductors, semiconductor manufacturing and testing equipment, software, scientific instruments and most parts and accessories of these products. Figure 2 ItTA Expansion: Estimated Value of Trade Covered by the Agreement, by Member, 2011-2013 The Agreement also includes the obligation to eliminate non-tariff barriers in the information technology sector and to maintain the list of products examined to determine whether further expansion may be required to reflect future technological developments. India is a signatory to the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) (now also known as ITA-1), a plurilateral WTO agreement. To date, there are a total of 75 member signatories, including 27 EU Member States, which account for around 97% of global trade in information technology (IT) products. India joined the ITA on 25 March 1997. The Information Technology Agreement (ITA) is a plurilateral agreement implemented by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and concluded in 1996 in the Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products and entered into force on 1 July 1997. Since 1997, a formal WTO committee has been monitoring the following provisions of the Declaration and its implementation. [2] The agreement was extended in 2015.
[3] Measuring, testing and analysis instruments Flow meters Spectrometer various instruments for measuring and controlling liquids and gases Electronic components Capacitors Resistors Semiconductor printed circuit boards You can perform more sophisticated searches via the Search function Documents Online (Opens in a new window) by defining several search criteria such as document code, the full-text search or date of the document. According to a study published in 2017 in the World Trade Review, the expansion of the ITA in 2015 is “the most successful attempt at trade liberalization under the auspices of the WTO since its inception in 1995.” [3] The study attributes the success of the negotiations to four factors: “a narrower scope without a unified approach to business, a negotiating group that included many, but not all, WTO members, the focus on tariffs rather than non-tariff barriers, and the avoidance of nationalist opposition.” [3] ¹ Exports of participants in the ITA enlargement negotiations. Excluding intra-EU trade and excluding re-exports from Hong Kong, China. Source: UN Comtrade (ITA extension; available. Rapporteurs), WTO Secretariat (all other product groups) Miscellaneous products Silicon wafers Dictionary and translation material Indicator tables Approach maps and labels Work on this topic is carried out by the Committee of Participants on the Expansion of Trade in Information Technology Products. The current president is. In May 2012, on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the ITA, it was recognized that new IT product categories had been developed, including a number of products that fall outside the scope of the existing ITA. Given the evolution of new technologies, some WTO members felt that the current coverage of ITA products should be extended. .
The original Information Technology Agreement (ITA) was concluded on 13 December 1996 through a “Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products” at the first WTO Ministerial Conference in Singapore. 1) Excluding intra-EU trade from the EU and re-exports from Hong Kong, China. Source: WTO Secretariat (based on UN COMtrade data). . Since tariff elimination is included in their WTO engagement plans, the IYB participants extended duty-free treatment to all Members on a most-favoured-nation basis, thereby reaping the benefits of the Agreement for all WTO Members. Figure 1 ITA Expansion: Global Exports of Selected Product Groups, 2013 $tn Computer Hardware, Assemblies and Peripherals PC Laptops/Laptops Keyboards Storage Units, such as. B Discs Import duties on some of the products covered are relatively high in some markets. In the United States, for example, tariffs on parts of telephone receivers are 8.5%, while in China, tariffs of 35% are levied on video cameras, the EU duty on DVD burners is 14%, and Thailand imposes a 30% duty on certain magnetic cards.
Since ITA concessions are included in WTO participants` concessions, tariff removal will be carried out on the basis of most-favoured-nation (MFN) treatment. This means that even countries that have not joined the ITA can benefit from the trade opportunities resulting from the elimination of ITA tariffs. Proponents of ITA expansion have created and distributed a consolidated list of IT products (combining products of interest to all ITA 2 supporters) aimed at achieving tariff reductions among WTO Members […].