APPENDIXWto and Agreement • May 24th, 2017
The General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the precursor of the WTO, came into force in 1947 to regulate international trade. Unfortunately, the GATT rules were never effectively applied in respect of agricultural products. Thus before the Agreement on Agriculture came into force in 1995, there was no institutional mechanism existed to balance the policy interests of different countries. Against this background of “disarray” the GATT signatory counties embarked on the Uruguay Round of trade negotiation in 1986. The goal of the agricultural negotiations was to establish a fair and market oriented agriculture trading system - through strengthened and more operationally effective GATT rules and disciplines resulting in correcting and preventing restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets. The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), which came into force in 1995, represented the first occasion on which a clear set of rules was set up to cover agricultural trad
