Engineering:Information Technology Agreement
| Signed | 13 December 1996 |
|---|---|
| Effective | 1 July 1997 |
| Depositary | World Trade Organization |
The Information Technology Agreement (ITA) is a plurilateral agreement enforced by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and concluded in the Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products in 1996, and entered into force 1 July 1997. Since 1997 a formal Committee under the WTO watches over the following of the Declaration and its Implementations.[2] The agreement was expanded in 2015.[3]
The aim of the treaty is to lower all taxes and tariffs on information technology products by signatories to zero.[2]
According to a 2017 study in the World Trade Review, the 2015 ITA expansion is "the most successful attempt at trade liberalization under the auspices of the WTO since its inception in 1995."[3] The study credits the success of the negotiations to four factors: "a narrower scope without a single undertaking approach, a negotiating group that contained many but not all WTO members, a focus on tariffs rather than non-tariff barriers, and avoiding a nationalistic opposition."[3]
References
- ↑ INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: SCHEDULES OF CONCESSIONS
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Information Technology Agreement — introduction". World Trade Organization. http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_E/inftec_e/itaintro_e.htm.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Winslett, Gary (2017). "Critical Mass Agreements: The Proven Template for Trade Liberalization in the WTO". World Trade Review 17 (3): 405–426. doi:10.1017/S1474745617000295. ISSN 1474-7456. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/world-trade-review/article/critical-mass-agreements-the-proven-template-for-trade-liberalization-in-the-wto/1411D2BF2BAC8046E2A45EE23B316CB7.
External links
- Information Technology Agreement, WTO, http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_E/inftec_e/inftec_e.htm.
- ITA Schedules of Concessions, WTO, http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_E/inftec_e/itscheds_e.htm.
- "Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products". Singapore: World Trade Organization. 13 December 1996. http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/itadec_e.pdf.
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