The World Trade Organisation (WTO) informed on May 6 of a trade dialogue held with senior representatives of consumer organisations, during which they sent a strong message of support for the WTO and the multilateral trading system. The representatives stressed the importance of ensuring that consumers’ concerns are taken into account in trade negotiations and policymaking. The representatives presented their priorities for ecommerce, along with recommendations on how these priorities should be addressed at the WTO.

If you do not follow the activities of the WTO on a regular basis, you might well question whether you might have missed something. Yes, you might well have. Just over three months ago – on January 25 – the WTO issued a statement – three-quarters of a page long – on ecommerce.

The statement was circulated at the request of the delegations of Albania, Argentina, Australia, the Kingdom of Bahrain, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, the European Union, Georgia, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Kuwait, Lao, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Myanmar, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Singapore, Switzerland, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the US and Uruguay.

According to the statement, the Ministers representing these WTO members welcomed the progress made toward WTO negotiations on electronic commerce since the eleventh WTO Ministerial Conference, in Buenos Aires. The statement concluded: “We confirm our intention to commence WTO negotiations on trade-related aspects of electronic commerce. We will seek to achieve a high-standard outcome that builds on existing WTO agreements and frameworks with the participation of as many WTO members as possible. We recognise and will take into account the unique opportunities and challenges faced by members, including developing countries and least-develped countries, as well as by small and medium-sized microenterprises, in relation to electronic commerce. We continue to encourage all WTO members to participate in order to further enhance the benefits of electronic commerce for businesses, consumers and the global economy.”

Interestingly, despite its prominence and innovation in ecommerce, South Africa does not feature as one of the leading WTO members. This is particularly perplexing, given the country’s past leading roles in the WTO and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Meanwhile, concerning the WTO’s ecommerce trade negotiations of January 25, at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, 76 partners – EU members and 48 WTO members – decided to start negotiations to put in place global rules on ecommerce.

According to the EU, the last two decades have witnessed exponential growth in domestic and cross-border electronic commerce. However, despite this fast increase in electronic transactions, there are no specific multilateral rules in the WTO regulating this type of trade. Instead, business and consumers have to rely on a patchwork of rules agreed by some countries in their bilateral or regional trade agreements.

WTO rules on ecommerce will aim to enhance opportunities and address challenges in both developed and developing countries. The negotiations should result in a multilateral legal framework that consumers and businesses, especially smaller ones, could rely on to make it easier and safer to buy, sell and do business online. The new rules would, for instance, improve consumers’ trust in the online environment and combat spam, tackle barriers that prevent cross-border sales, guarantee the validity of econtracts and esignatures, permanently ban customs duties on electronic transmissions, and address forced data localisation requirements and forced disclosure of source code.

Everybody, seemingly bar South Africa, is getting involved. On April 5, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development announced that it stood ready to work with developing countries to enhance their preparedness to seize the opportunities offered by eommerce should they choose to join the proposed talks involving WTO members.