World Trade Organization
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The World Trade Organization (in short, WTO) is an international organization of many countries. In 1995, WTO came into being. On 15th December 2005, 149 countries were members of the WTO. The headquarters of the WTO are at Geneva, Switzerland. A Director General heads this organization. There are several offices and other persons working for the WTO.
Member countries of the WTO sign agreements. There are about 30 such agreements. Based on these agreements, the member countries do trade among themselves. They grant concessions to each other and follow a set of rules. They have to give a special position to the other country. The term used (for such and many similar concessions) is to give the other country a special position – this is known as to give the other country a most favored nation position. From 2004, if a member grants any concession to another member country, same type of concession should be granted to all the other member countries. From its very beginning, the WTO has also attracted some negative comments.
