On November 25 th, the Thai Parliament ratified the World Trade organization agreements with barely a month left before the new organization was due to be established formally at the start of 1995
Thailand was country, the World Trade organization 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 World Trade organization agreement 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 World Trade organization agreement in Marrakech, Morocco in April;
-The decision in September to slash five years off the ASEAN Free Trade Area programme; and
- The agreement in November to set up regional free trade in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group by the year 2020
The impact of these three events is likely to reach far beyond the traditional types of trade of trade-imports and exports of goods - into a whole range of international trade 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 reading 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 lenght of time needed to study the agreement and to translate it into Thai.
One reason for the lack of passion is that much of what might have been painful has already been done. In particular, 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.