User:Cwol9618/draft
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The Trade Facilitation Agreement 2014, was confirmed in Bali, Indonesiain December 2013 at the Ninth Ministerial Conference. After almost 20 years of negotiationsthe agreementwas officially an open invitation for acceptance from the 160 members of the World Trade Organisation(WTO) on 27 of December 2014. However the agreement will only be ratified once 2/3 of the members have informed the WTOof their agreement. For the WTO, the agreement can be viewed as a historic achievement as it is the first multilateral agreement since the WTO’sinception in 1995. The Trade Facilitation Agreement of 2014 is a global multilateral initiative to rationalise the stringent procedures which govern international trade. The principal focus of the Agreement is to have numerous positive consequences on developed and least developed countries. Estimates have shown the the Trade Facilitation Agreement would reduce tradecosts by an average of 14.5%. In turn, this would prospectively improve trade globally by on trillion dollars. This reduction of bureaucratic'red tape' will have favourable effects on small to medium businesses, making it easier for them to trade and join global value chains. One of the most significant aspects of this agreement, lies in the new principle that developing and least developed countriescommitments to the implementation of the provisions outlined by the agreement are conditioned on their procurement of necessary technical capacity.[1]