./.WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/GC/W/351
11 October 1999
(99-4258)
General Council Original:  Spanish
PREPARATIONS FOR THE 1999 MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE
Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures
Communication from Mexico
The following communication, dated 1 October 1999, has been received from the Permanent
Mission of Mexico.
Introduction
1. The Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures regulates the application of the
TRIMs that are considered to be incompatible with Articles III (National Treatment) and XI (General
Elimination of Quantitative Restrictions) of the GATT 1994.  The TRIMs considered to be
incompatible with those provisions are set out in  an Illustrative List attached to the Agreement.
2. The Agreement on TRIMs established different transitional periods for maintaining certain
TRIMs and deciding on their dismantling, provided that they have been notified to the Committee on
TRIMs.  The transitional periods originally established were of five years as from the entry into force
of the WTO for developing countries and seven years for the least developed countries.
3. When the Agreement on TRIMs was negotiated, many doubts were raised as to whether the
established transitional periods were sufficient, both for practical reasons as well as for reasons of
balance and equity with regard to other WTO Agreements in which developed countries insisted on
and obtained transitional periods in their interests of up to ten years.
4. From a practical standpoint, when the Agreement on TRIMs was being negotiated, there was
no guarantee that the original transitional periods would be enough for carrying out the structural
adjustments that would enable developing countries, including the least developed, to eliminate the
use of the TRIMs notified to the Committee, without thereby causing developmental dislocations and
problems in sensitive areas of their economy.
5. Hence, unlike other agreements, the Agreement on TRIMs clearly and explicitly made
provision for:
(a) The right to request that the Council for Trade in Goods prolong the transitional
period initially envisaged (see Article 5.3 of the Agreement), and
(b) The review of the Agreement based on experience, leaving open the possibility of
proposing amendments to any of its provisions (see Article 9).
6. In the preparatory work for the Third Ministerial Conference a large number of developing
countries have spoken out in favour of a review of the substance of the Agreement on TRIMs,WT/GC/W/351
Page 2
including its transitional periods, and a number of developing countries have expressed their interest
in extending their TRIMs.
7. In the light of the foregoing, Mexico believes that rather than having to agree on the way of
going about granting the extensions envisaged in Article 5.3 of the Agreement and determining how
those extensions would relate to the review envisaged in Article 9 of that same Agreement, it wouldbe best for the Ministerial Conference to decide to extend the original transitional periods by a further
five years.
Proposal
8. Mexico proposes that the Ministerial Declaration of Seattle should include the following
decision:
Ministers agree that the original transitional periods for all the TRIMs which were notified to
the Committee on TRIMs and are still in force will be automatically extended for a further
period of five years as from 1 January 2000.
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