Thailand has already amended its patent and copyright laws to conform with the Uruguay Round provisions. Another is that Thailand is unilaterally planning to go beyond its commitments in the Uruguay Round in a number of areas such as tariff reductions and telecommunications liberalization.
Thailand was one of the last countries in ASEAN to ratify the agreements, but it was still ahead of the United States and the European Union (the EEC). In this country, the WTO debate itself was a tame affair. This contrasted starkly with the wide-reaching impacts that are expected to be felt from the agreements, the bitterness of some of the negotiations during more than seven years of the Uruguay Round of world trade talks, and the intensity of the public debate in many other countries. In several ways, the Thai parliamentary debate symbolized the situation in Thailand. Ratification of the WTO agreements wrapped up a year in which three events took place that will be important for the country’s trade future, in 1995 and subsequent years. The formal conclusion of the Uruguay Round with the signing of the WTO agreements in Marrakech, Morocco in April; The decision in September to slash five years off the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) programme; and The agreement in November to set up regional free trade in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group by the year 2020. The impact of these three events is likely to reach far beyond the traditional types of trade-imports and exports of goods – into a whole range of internationally traded services, investment and intellectual property rights. But for the main part, the Uruguay Round has not aroused much passion, either politically or in private sector lobbying. In the end, the ratification bill passed all three readings in a single vote of the joint session of both houses, after just over two hours of subdued debate. The readings took place a whole seven months after the agreements concluding the Uruguay Round were signed in Marrakech. Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi said earlier that the debate could not be held sooner than that because of the length of time needed to study the agreement and to translate it into Thai
Thailand has already amended its patent and copyright laws to conform with the Uruguay Round provisions. Another is that Thailand is unilaterally planning to go beyond its commitments in the Uruguay Round in a number of areas such as tariff reductions and telecommunications liberalization.
Thailand was one of the last countries in ASEAN to ratify the agreements, but it was still ahead of the United States and the European Union (the EEC). In this country, the WTO debate itself was a tame affair. This contrasted starkly with the wide-reaching impacts that are expected to be felt from the agreements, the bitterness of some of the negotiations during more than seven years of the Uruguay Round of world trade talks, and the intensity of the public debate in many other countries. In several ways, the Thai parliamentary debate symbolized the situation in Thailand. Ratification of the WTO agreements wrapped up a year in which three events took place that will be important for the country’s trade future, in 1995 and subsequent years. The formal conclusion of the Uruguay Round with the signing of the WTO agreements in Marrakech, Morocco in April; The decision in September to slash five years off the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) programme; and The agreement in November to set up regional free trade in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group by the year 2020. The impact of these three events is likely to reach far beyond the traditional types of trade-imports and exports of goods – into a whole range of internationally traded services, investment and intellectual property rights. But for the main part, the Uruguay Round has not aroused much passion, either politically or in private sector lobbying. In the end, the ratification bill passed all three readings in a single vote of the joint session of both houses, after just over two hours of subdued debate. The readings took place a whole seven months after the agreements concluding the Uruguay Round were signed in Marrakech. Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi said earlier that the debate could not be held sooner than that because of the length of time needed to study the agreement and to translate it into Thai
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