ECUADOR'S ACCESSION FOR BALLOT

4:31 PM Jul 31, 1995

ECUADOR'S ACCESSION FOR BALLOT
Geneva 31 July (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The General Council of the World Trade Organization (WTO) adopted Monday the report of the Working Party for the accession of Ecuador, and to put the accession request (with its terms) for a postal vote as required.

The accession has to be accepted, within 30-days (i.e. before 31 Aug.) by a two-thirds majority of the WTO's 105 members. This will be the first accession to the WTO as such.

The Council also agreed to send for a vote the waiver requests (in respect of the old GATT 1947) from a number of countries for transposition of their tariff lines and schedules to the Harmonized System classifications. A three-fourths majority vote is needed for grant of waivers to end 1995.

The countries whose waiver requests has been recommended for a vote include Bangladesh, Guatemala, Israel, Jamaica, Morocco, Sri Lanka and Trinidad and Tobago.

Pakistan has a similar request, but that has been tied up in dispute over the time to be given to Pakistan - with the EU and US apparently insisting that the issue has been pending long enough (since 1985-86) for Pakistan to comply and it should have no more than 2-4 months.

Under any other business, a number of members raised their concerns over Brazil's proposal to restrict automobile imports for balance-of-payments reasons.

The United States, Korea, Canada, the European Union and Japan expressed their concerns and asked for consultations to be held. The Chairman of the Balance-of-Payments (BOP) Committee, Peter Witt of Germany, told the Council that he had already been contacted to establish a date for the BOP consultations with Brazil and he was consulting on this matter. The consultations are expected to be held sometime early in September.