WTO mission to conduct first review of Seychelles Trade Policy comes to an end
April 08, 2022
A mission by the World Trade Organisation to review Seychelles trade policy has ended.
The delegation was on a three-day mission, where they met with relevant stakeholders, including a meeting with the Minister for Finance, National Planning and Trade, Naadir Hassan.
The objective was to carry out the first ever audit of Seychelles trade policy.
The Principal Secretary for Trade, Ronald Cafrine, explained the importance of this audit.
‘This exercise is aimed at collecting as much information as possible in reference to the development of trade policies in the country, to enable an audit of what Seychelles has done since becoming a member state of the World Trade Organisation, seven years ago.”
Mr. Willy Alfaro, Director of Trade Policy Review Division, within WTO, has expressed his satisfaction with the three-day mission.
“We have been successful, not only because we have been able to explain how the process will unfold, but also because we have been able to obtain a lot of information regarding the policies and practices in different areas covering the economy in general.”
With the information collected, the process to draft the preliminary report will get underway, to which there will be additional information needed.
“It was important that all experts and government agencies are fully aware of how we will work in the coming months, with the view to prepare a very comprehensive report that will be submitted to all WTO members for them to assess how Seychelles is conducting its trade policy”, noted Mr. Alfaro.
To enable the smooth flow of information between Seychelles and the WTO team, an interministerial/agencies committee will be set up.
“The review is important to us, and we look forward to the final report, but in the meantime by setting up the national committee we will ensure a constant flow of coherent information is ongoing between the two parties”, said PS Cafrine.
Mr. Alfaro, has commended this move, saying ‘this is something that has proven to be extremely useful for other members of WTO, that have been reviewed.”
Mr. Cafrine said that the Trade Department will also solicit the support of the government for this process.
“We will draft a Cabinet Paper which we intend to present to the Cabinet to get their support to ensure the process, which has just started run smoothly, up to December.
Once the preliminary report is ready, the WTO delegation will return to Seychelles, in September, for further discussions.
Mr. Alfaro said he is ‘fully confident that with the amount of commitment and help that was provided to us during these three days, I am confident that we would be able to obtain a very good result.”
The final report of this first review of Seychelles trade policy will be presented to all WTO members in December for debate.
“At this meeting Seychelles will be in the spotlight. We will have to answer queries of members and ensure that we strongly defend our position”, said PS Cafrine.
For his part, Mr. Alfaro said that he believes ‘Seychelles has been very serious in considering the commitments it made at the time of accession in WTO. Seychelles is among the young members of WTO, only 7 years, and we believe that in the course of these seven years Seychelles has made good work in that area.”
At the December meeting of all member states of WTO, the government of Seychelles will also present a policy paper on trade, alongside the WTO review report.
Both reports will be made public.