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| Vietnam will become WTO's 150th member |
| Geneva, 08.11.2006 |
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| GENEVA (Reuters) - Communist Vietnam, one of the world's fastest growing economies, won formal approval from the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday to become its 150th member by the end of the yearThe executive General Council approved a deal struck late last month by the WTO's working party on Vietnam's accession, a formality because the working party is open to all WTO states with an interest in the negotiation.
Vietnam, a country of 82 million people, will officially become part of the WTO, which sets the rules for global trade, 30 days after its National Assembly ratifies the accession accords.
"It is done, they have been accepted," said a WTO spokesman after the request was gaveled through at a closed-door session of the Council.
Vietnam, a major exporter of textiles, seafood, coffee and furniture, had been negotiating to join the 149-state WTO for 12 years while its once state-controlled economy has undergone sweeping reform.
Although its economy is relatively small, with gross domestic product of $61 billion this year, it is the latest of Asia's economic success stories.
Estimated economic growth was 8.2 percent in 2006, labor is cheap and Vietnam is the darling of the foreign aid and investment communities.
Its average economic growth of 7.4 percent over the past five years is higher than any other Asian country except China, its Communist neighbor whose economic output has soared since it joined the WTO in late 2001.
COURAGE
In the 1960s and early 1970s the United States waged war against communist North Vietnam and its guerrilla supporters in the south who together took over the whole country in 1973. Now it praised Hanoi's "courage" during the marathon entry talks.
As a WTO member, Vietnam's vital exports will be protected by the organization's rules from any arbitrary decisions by other countries to block imports they regard as threatening to their domestic producers.
The deal includes the tariffs and quotas Vietnam will apply to foreign imports, the ceilings it will apply on subsidies to its farm sector, and timetables for reducing them.
It also specifies services such as banking, insurance and telecommunications that Vietnam will open to outside providers and spells out limits to the restrictions it can impose on foreign ownership of firms inside the country.
Vietnam's neighbor Cambodia joined the WTO in 2004 despite warnings from regional economists that it had conceded too much in the negotiations and risked having its domestic firms and farms ruined by foreign competition.
Vietnam's accession will leave only a handful of important economies outside the WTO, including Russia and Ukraine, which are both negotiating entry, and Iran.
Vietnam will move further into the mainstream of trade diplomacy on November 17-18 when it hosts a Hanoi summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ( APEC), a body which includes the United States, China, Russia and Japan
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