Pakistan has been elected to Chair the "Committee on Trade & Development (CTD)" of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for 2021.

“The Ministry of Commerce is happy to share that Pakistan has been elected to Chair the 'Committee on Trade & Development (CTD)' of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for 2021,” informed Advisor to Prime Minister on Trade and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood on Friday.

CTD was established in 1965 in GATT (now WTO) for economic development of Developing Countries especially issues related to “Enabling Clause”, for provision of non-reciprocal trading preferences to Developing Countries, like GSP, etc.

“Under Pakistan’s leadership, the CTD would strive to work for expansion of trade & investment opportunities for Developing Countries,” Dawood added.

Pakistan has considerably improved its implementation of World Trade Organization (WTO)'s Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) from 34% in June, 2018 to 79% in November, 2020, stated in a press release by Federal Board of Revenue.

Due to improvement in the implementation of TFA, Pakistan has improved 31 positions in Trading Across Border Index which tangibly contributed to rise of Pakistan (from 136th position to 108th position) in the Global Fund's Annual Ease of Doing Business 2020 Report. Implementation of WTO's TFA by Pakistan is greater than regional countries like India and Bangladesh whose implementation rate is 78.2% and 36.1% respectively. Pakistan's implementation rate is higher than those of average of all WTO members (which is at 65.5%) and the average of all developing countries (which is at 65.2%).