. /.RESTRICTEDWORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONG/MA/NTM/QR/W/1
27 February 2001
(01-0965)
Committee on Market Access
NOTIFICATIONS OF QUANTITATIVE RESTRICTIONS
Note by the Secretariat
At the Committee meeting of 12 October 2000, under agenda item "F" entitled, "Status of
notifications of quantitative restrictions", the Chairman made a proposal regarding certainnotifications of  quantitative restrictions.  Delegations requested that the proposal be made in writing
to facilitate its consideration and it is in this connection that the following note has been prepared. The
Committee also agreed to revert to the matter at its formal meeting scheduled for Spring 2001.
On 1 January 1995 the Council for Trade in Goods adopted a decision on Notification
Procedures for Quantitative Restrictions which is contained in document G/L/59.  Pursuant to this
Decision, Members are required to make notificati ons every two years of the quantitative restrictions
they maintain.  More specifically, paragraph 1 of the Decision states that "Members shall make
complete notifications of the quantitative restrictions which they maintain by 31 January 1996 and at
two-yearly intervals thereafter, and shall notify changes to their quantitative restrictions as and whenthese changes occur." These notifications were to be stored by the Secretariat in a new Quantitative
Restrictions (QR) database.
Since the inception of this PC database in 1997, 28 Members (EC =1) have made notifications
of quantitative restrictions they maintain.  24 Members have indicated that they do not maintain any
quantitative restrictions
1. With respect to the Year 2000 notifications, document
G/MA/NTM/QR/1/Add.7 provides an update of the s ituation.  Since this document was circulated,
five more notifications have been made, and will be included in the next addendum to this document.
A problem  has arisen with respect to registering in the QR database notifications made by
some Members in the area of textiles and clothing. The Decision allows Members which have made
notifications under other WTO provisions to notify that fact together with the relevant cross-referenceto the Secretariat and the Secretariat is to input such notifications into the database.  In the case of
textiles and clothing and in respect of some countries, a problem has arisen in that the format used to
notify under the provisions of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) is not always
compatible with the format to be used for the database.   More specifically, in some of the
notifications made under the ATC, the quota levels are set out according to categories which containmany HS lines.  These categories are different in each of the countries concerned.  The database calls
for information by individual HS lines.  However, it is not possible for the Secretariat to identify and
separate these individual HS lines from the category groupings in the textile notifications.
                                                     
1 Document G/MA/NTM/QR/2 which sets out the "Format for Notification of Quantitative
Restrictions" pursuant to the decision G/L/59 indicates that "While the Decision does not oblige a Member tonotify the fact that their governments do not maintain quantitative restrictions, Members are encouraged to
provide such information for transparency purposes."G/MA/NTM/QR/W/1
Page 2
To deal with this situation and any future su ch situation i.e. where  there is a problem to
include the quantitative restriction in the database, the Chairman proposed that the Secretariat
introduce an explanatory note in the country notes that it maintains, explaining that for example, the
ATC quota lists are contained in other documents, giving the reference symbols of these documents,without attempting to incorporate them in the QR database.  It is to be noted that these country notes
are not included in the database but are maintained separately by the Secretariat in a file.
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