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Guyana has taken important steps to liberalize its trade and
investment regimes in the last 15 years, enhancing its integration into
the global economy, but needs to make further efforts to increase its
competitiveness while also seeking to diversify its production and
export base to face a possible further erosion of trade preferences,
according to a report on the trade policies and practices of Guyana
released 31 of October by the WTO Secretariat.
The report says that Guyana’s economy, now dependent to a great extent
on a few natural resources, such as sugar, gold, bauxite and rice, has
been growing at a very slow pace in recent years despite the reform
efforts undertaken. Market access has in general been enhanced under the
process of progressive liberalization in CARICOM (Caribbean Community
and Common Market) but the process of integrating the WTO agreements
into domestic legislation has not been fully completed.
The report adds that preferential access to the markets of the European
Union and the United States is important to Guyana for exports of its
traditional products but the country has been affected in recent years
by a deterioration of its terms of trade, compounded by an erosion of
preferential margins. For these reasons, diversification of the economy
is generally seen in Guyana as an imperative, says the report. This can
be best achieved by continuing and strengthening the process of economic
reform and trade liberalization underway.
The
following documents are available in MS Word format.
Note
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Trade Policy Reviews are an exercise, mandated in the WTO agreements,
in which member countries’ trade and related policies are examined and
evaluated at regular intervals. Significant developments that may have
an impact on the global trading system are also monitored. For each
review, two documents are prepared: a policy statement by the
government of the member under review, and a detailed report written
independently by the WTO Secretariat. These two documents are then
discussed by the WTO’s full membership in the Trade Policy Review Body
(TPRB). These documents and the proceedings of the TPRB’s meetings are
published shortly afterwards.
Print
copies of previous TPR publications are available for sale from the
WTO Secretariat, Centre William Rappard, 154 rue de Lausanne, 1211
Genève 21 and through the on-line
bookshop.
The
TPR publications are also available from our co-publisher Bernan Press, 4611-F Assembly Drive, Lanham, MD 20706-4391, United States.
Schedule of forthcoming reviews
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Haiti: 4, 6 November 2003
Thailand: 12, 14 November 2003
Chile: 2, 4 December 2003 |
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