Trade Compliance Center - Making America's Trade Agreements Work for You!

Colombia has achieved steady economic growth in recent years, and has made definite progress in the modernization and liberalization of its trade regime since its previous review in 1996. Non-tariff barriers to trade have been significantly reduced and the country has embarked on an ambitious programme of reforms of many economic sectors particularly services, according to a WTO Secretariat report on the trade policies and practices of Colombia.

The report notes that to consolidate and broaden these gains it would be important to address, among others, certain practices related to customs, import licensing, local content requirements, internal taxes and the regulation of certain services. It would be also useful to reassess export promotion and incentive schemes.

The report, along with policy statement by the Government of Colombia, will be the basis for the third Trade Policy Review (TPR) of Colombia by the Trade Policy Review Body of the WTO on 22 and 24 November 2006.

• Secretariat report
> Contents and summary observations (12 pages, 100KB)
> Economic environment (13 pages, 511KB)
> Trade and investment regimes (13 pages, 124KB)
> Trade policies and practices by measure (42 pages, 652KB)
> Trade policies by sector (46 pages, 486KB)
> Appendix tables (28 pages, 1246KB)

• Government report (13 pages, 98KB)

• Revisions of the above documents may be issued approximately 2 weeks after the meeting.

• Chairperson’s concluding remarks

• Minutes of the meeting are available approximately 6 weeks after the meeting.

• Questions and answers by WTO Members are available approximately 6 weeks after the meeting.

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 WTOs full membership in the Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB). These documents and the proceedings of the TPRBs 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 Geneve 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.

Hong Kong, China: 13 and 15 December 2006
Chad: 15 and 17 January 2007
Japan: 31 January and 2 February 2007