On July 19th 1996 Iran passed her application for accession to WTO. About 9 years later the organization accepted Iran as an observer member. Since then, disputes over should Iran be a full member or not, has been flamed between parts of the activists within the authorities plus parts of strong private business holders and the governments in power. Now, the President Rouhani is under pressure to follow Iran’s accession. The following is showing some notes about this 19 years old disputes.
Iran’s 2015 deal with G 5+1 powers to resolve issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program generated hope that the political obstacles to Tehran’s accession process will be a thing of the past, WTO has not yet reached consensus over electing a chairman for the working party.
Despite growing support in Europe after the nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia and the United States are said to be opposing Iran’s accession. However, there is widespread belief that the Iranian government and other influential branches of power are not unanimous about joining the international free trade community.
There has not been enough push in the administration of President Hassan Rouhani who was elected with the promise of pulling down walls around Iran, politically and economically, both in 2013 and recently in May 2017.
The economist believes the government of Iran does not have a clear-cut executive plan to transform Iran from a closed economy to a competitive one. Behkish called on Rouhani to consider lowering tariffs when appointing a new Cabinet.
“Tariffs are still high, and in some cases Iran has opposed free trade agreements with other countries in recent years,” he said.
But this is not the whole story as many believe that for a country like Iran, which is the 18th largest economy in the world in terms of GDP, unimpressive international trade rankings come as a surprise.
Iranian policymakers, however, have been striving for years to improve the country’s trade status. As part of that, around a quarter of a century ago, they came to the conclusion that their country should join the world’s largest pro-trade entity: World Trade Organization.
