WTO countries to extend moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions until May

GENEVA, April 3. /TASS/. Twenty-three WTO member countries agreed to voluntarily extend the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions until May, as follows from a joint statement by the 23 countries obtained by TASS. This agreement was reached on April 1 after negotiations on the issue stalled at the organization’s 14th Ministerial Conference in Cameroon. "We agree to maintain the current practice of not imposing customs duties on electronic transmissions among ourselves," the statement says. The WTO ban on customs duties on electronic transmissions (digital goods transferred across borders, such as downloading games, movies, and software via the internet), has been regularly extended since 1998 and remained in effect until the end of March of this year. The agreement was signed by 23 WTO members, including the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Japan. They noted that this measure will be temporary and will remain in effect until the next meeting of the WTO General Council, scheduled for the first week of May. At this meeting, the parties are expected to continue discussing the issues that could not be resolved during the ministerial discussions in Cameroon. The Ministerial Conference (MC) is the highest decision-making body of the WTO, which meets every two years. MC-14 was held in the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, from March 26 to 30. Delegates failed to reach agreement on any key issues, the most important of which was reforming the organization. According to the European edition of Politico, Brazil blocked at the last minute a compromise that had emerged during the negotiations on the moratorium on e-commerce tariffs, the extension of which Washington had conditioned on its agreement to support the WTO reform plan. That means that the draft document, which had been in the works for months in Geneva, was not agreed upon at the meeting in Yaounde.