Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra will lead the Argentine delegation to the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) Mini-Ministerial Meeting, on 21 and 22 October in Oslo, Norway, in which Minister of Production Francisco Cabrera and Secretary for Trade Miguel Braun will also participate.
This is an opportunity to establish informal high-level dialogue to make progress on future multilateral negotiations in the WTO context and on the objectives of the 11th Ministerial Conference.
WTO members have unanimously decided to hold the next WTO Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires, in December 2017. Argentina is already working with a number of countries and with the WTO Secretariat in furtherance of a successful Conference.
This "Mini-Ministerial" meeting was convened by Norway, which chairs the WTO General Council. Apart from Argentina, the meeting will be attended by Ministers from the United States, the European Union, Japan, China, Russia, India, Brazil, Korea, Canada, Australia, Colombia, Mexico, Benin (Coordinator of the Group of Least-Developed Countries (LDCs)), Indonesia (Coordinator of the Group of Members with Defensive Interests in Agriculture (G33)), Kenya, Lesotho, Morocco (African Group), New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, Rwanda (Asian, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP)), Singapore, and Switzerland.
Foreign Minister Malcorra will be the main speaker at the opening session on "Economic Growth and International Trade" and will also have an important role in the session "Ensuring the Success of the 11th Ministerial Conference" as a result of the leadership assumed by Argentina in relation to such Conference. The Argentine delegation will also hold several bilateral meetings with the Ministers of the participating countries.
"We must strengthen the multilateral trade system and the role of the WTO. There is no time to waste. We must move from thought into action immediately and work to achieve consensus focusing on development and inclusion. It is possible to achieve substantial results and we are going to make our best efforts to do so, especially after the confidence placed by WTO members in Argentina when selecting our country to host the next Ministerial Conference," stated the Foreign Minister.
Press Release No. 347/16
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