Abstract
Transparency, as a fundamental principle of international trade, could reduce the cost caused by information asymmetries and promote market predictability as well as non-discriminatory treatments. This paper examines transparency provisions in both World Trade Organization (WTO) rules at the multilateral level and Asia-Pacific regional trade agreements (RTAs) at the regional as well as bilateral level. Comparing with WTO provisions, the evolving practice in Asia-Pacific RTAs successfully reinforces and deepens current multilateral transparency obligations. Besides, the importance of transparency of the preferential trade treatments is also investigated in the WTO Transparency Mechanism for Preferential Trade Arrangements. The authors argued that the homogenous content of the examined Asia-Pacific RTAs transparency development provides a governance initiative that could well offer lessons for the WTO.
Highlights
Transparency has been recognized as a fundamental element of good governance
This paper investigates current transparency mechanisms in World Trade Organization (WTO) multilateral regulations and regional trade agreements adopted in Asia-Pacific area, and those signed by trading powers in this region, like Australia and China
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) keeps silent on this term in its preamble, so as in Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS), while the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) replicates the GATT Article X and renames it as transparency.[90]
Summary
Transparency has been recognized as a fundamental element of good governance. In the field of international trade, it plays an important role to reduce traders’ time and cost in seeking information. In the WTO’s glossary, the term is defined in the context of information disclosure, as “the degree which trade policies and practices, and the process by which they are established, are open and predictable.”[15] The WTO Analytical Index further refers it as the obligation to notify.[16] While Committee on Trade and Environment connects it directly with trade governance, saying “support the proper functioning of the multilateral trading system, by helping to prevent unnecessary trade restriction and distortion from occurring, by providing information about market opportunities and by helping to avoid trade disputes form arising.”[17] Within WTO framework, transparency has several dimensions and it is further categorized into internal and external transparency by Friedl Weiss. The role and significance of WTO transparency mechanisms for PTAs is addressed subsequently in Part V
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