A high-level official delegation representing Pakistan, led by Minister of State for Finance and Railways Bilal Azhar Kayani, arrived in Yaoundé, Cameroon, today to participate in the 14th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the WTO, Ali Sarfraz, is also part of the delegation along with his team from Pakistan’s WTO Mission in Geneva.
The MC is taking place in a highly volatile time when the WTO is facing, what many experts term as, ‘existential crisis’ due to increasing unilateralism, rising number of tariff and non-tariff barriers by various countries in the world and increasing preference for national priorities over a rule-based international order.
Bilal Azhar Kayani has been selected as Minister-Facilitator for the WTO’s Committee on Agriculture – Special Session (CoA-SS), which has been tasked to chart the way forward with regard to negotiations on agriculture-related issues.
Talks on agricultural trade have remained stalled for many years now due to inflexible positions taken by different countries, due to their internal policy considerations regarding farmers’ subsistence and food insecurity.
During the Ministerial Conference, Kayani will be meeting high-level political and official leadership of the key member states to develop convergence on the Chair’s text prepared by Ambassador Ali Sarfraz on the basis of recommendations of the members of the WTO.
