WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION   
WT/GC/141 
7 December 2011 
 (11-6337) 
General Council 
26 October 2011 Item 1 Original:   English 
 
  
STATEMENT BY H.E. THE RIGHT HO NOURABLE HAM LINI VANUAROROA,  
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER AND MINISTER OF TRADE, COMMERCE,  
INDUSTRY AND TOURISM, VANUATU 
 
 
 The following statement made by H.E. the Right Honourable Ham Lini Vanuaroroa at the 
General Council meeting on 26 Oct ober 2011 under "agenda item 1", is being circulated to Members 
at the request of that delegation. 
 
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  Thank you Director-General Pascal Lamy.  Thank you Chairman of the General Council and 
all WTO Members.   
 
 As Deputy Prime Minister, I was here on 4 April, at the Head of the Delegation of the Government of Vanuatu, at Informal Meeting of the Re-convened Working Party on the Accession of 
Vanuatu, which was chaired by Deputy Director-General Jara.  At that meeting, I made an appeal to 
WTO Members:  "Vanuatu is in the hands of the WTO, please open the doors of membership".    
 
 Today, 26 October 2011, I am pleased to return, with the Delegation of the Government of Vanuatu, and to walk through the doors of WTO membership.   Today is a happy moment of historical significance for the Government and People of the Republic of Vanuatu.   
 
 On behalf of H.E. the Right Honourable Sato Kilman, Prime Minister of Vanuatu, please accept the appreciation of the Government and Peopl e of Vanuatu on your pos itive consideration and 
approval of the WTO terms of membership of Vanua tu, as just approved by the General Council.   
 
 Prime Minister Kilman had very much wanted to be present here today, but had to change his 
plans after the change in date of the General Counc il to 26 October.  The Prime Minister is today in 
Perth, Australia, attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).   
  My statement is a very brief one.  The Chairman has already narrated the background of 
Vanuatu's accession.  So, I will not repeat it.  Vanua tu's accession story has b een told far and wide 
and, in many ways, represents the necessary and, in many ways, unavoidable challenges of the WTO accession process.  The Working Party on the Accessi on of Vanuatu was established in 1995.  It 
concluded its work in October 2001.   Vanuatu is a democracy with an active civil society.  Every 
stratum of our society matters to the Government , and all positions are cons idered and taken into 
account to the extent possible.   
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   We needed time to evaluate the package, to build ownership and to build a bipartisan 
consensus, which were necessary and indispensable to enact th e necessary reforms through our 
Parliamentary process.  It took a while!  But, so it is in democracies!  We are proud of our system of Government!    
 In November 2008, in the letter addressed to  the Director-General, the Government of 
Vanuatu requested Director-General Pascal Lamy to  resume the process.  We sought the assistance of 
the WTO Secretariat to undertake a technical upda te of our 2001 accession package.  In 2008, I was 
Prime-Minister, and later the same year became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Justice and Social Welfare.  I fully know the road that Vanua tu has travelled towards membership with you, the 
Members and the WTO Secretariat.    
  My message to other acceding governments is  a simple one:  although the process is 
challenging, more so in democracies, the conc lusion of WTO accession negotiations and the honest 
implementation of all the commitments undertaken  carry significant gains and benefits for the 
acceding government.  In Vanuatu, we know this to be so.   
  The Government of Vanuatu took tough decisions  and enacted legislation in several areas:   
 
 State Ownership, Privatization, and State Trading Entities.   
 Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures.   
 Trade-Related Intellectual Property Regime.   
 Services.   
 Trading Rights, where we amended the laws to ensure that import licences may be 
granted to foreign "importers of record" and to remove business licence fees that violate 
any commitment to non-discrimination and national treatment.   
 Import Licensing, where we have eliminated the discretionary authority of the Minister 
to restrict imports, with WTO-consistent am endments to the Import of Goods (Control) 
Act and the Customs Act.   
 The Goods offer and Services offer Vanuatu has made to WTO Members are substantial.   
  We have taken these decisions and reforms because Vanuatu believes that it is good for 
Vanuatu and good for the WTO.  It is a win-win situation.   
  As a government and people, Vanuatu knows that it  has made a rational choice.  We prefer to 
live in an environment of rules governing us, rath er than an un-transparent and chaotic regime.  
Since 2001, Vanuatu has actually implemented most of its WTO commitments.  Implementation of 
Vanuatu's WTO commitments, even be fore membership, is one of the factors that has accounted for 
Vanuatu's increased prosperity and substantial growth  rates.  Of this situation, we are justifiably 
proud.     At the risk of violating the foundation WTO principle of non-discrimination, the Government of Vanuatu expresses its sincere appreciation to the Governments of Australia, New Zealand, the 
European Union and the United States for their conc rete technical assistance to ensure that we are 
here today and to assist Vanuatu as we crossed the finishing line.     The Government of Vanuatu conveys its spec ial appreciation to Director-General Pascal 
Lamy for his strong support for Vanuatu, and other acceding least-developed countries, and also, 
specifically for his vision for a rules-based multila teral trading system that takes account of the 
development dimension, and the priorities and concerns of LDCs like Vanuatu.   
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   We also recognize the members of the Pacific O cean family who consistently stayed with us 
on this journey.     Through the Director-General, the Government  of Vanuatu pays tribute to the tireless 
Director of the Accessions Division; Mr. Chiedu Osakwe .  We know he found his visit to Port Vila in 
May this year memorable, when inter alia  he was received in the "House of Chiefs" to make his case 
to those who still had questions on the merits of Va nuatu's WTO membership.  We also pay tribute as 
well to Ms. Alicja Wielgus, the Working Party S ecretary and Mr. Dayong Yu, the Co-Secretary.   
  At this juncture, I hope that Members will also provide support  to my neighbouring country in 
its final working party meeting on Friday this week.  
  On this occasion, Prime Minister Sato Kilman  specifically requested me to register his own 
heartfelt appreciation to the Government in Port V ila, who joined in the bipartisan consensus at home 
to ensure that Vanuatu redeemed all our ob ligations and enacted relevant legislation. 
 
 On my own, I also thank the entire Vanuatu negotiating team over the years, including Vanuatu's former Prime Ministers, Ministers and Senior Officials, and our whole community in 
Vanuatu who supported the Government in this process, and specifically Ambassador 
Roy Mickey Joy, Chief Negotiator of the Govern ment of Vanuatu in its WTO accession negotiations. 
 
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