Geneva - The Director-General’s mid-year report on trade-related developments shows that WTO members continued to facilitate imports and generally exercise restraint in the use of trade-restrictive measures from mid-October 2022 to mid-May 2023. However, while the number of export restrictions on food, feed and fertilizers has come down substantially, many such measures remained in place, contributing to supply uncertainty and price volatility. Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala urged members to work together to deliver results at the 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) that strengthen the WTO and ensure trade continues to foster growth, resilience and prosperity.

Speaking at the launch of the report, DG Okonjo-Iweala said: “The fact that WTO members have been taking more steps to facilitate imports illustrates how trade is a valuable tool for pushing back against inflationary pressures.” Pointing to the introduction of export restrictions on food, feed and fertilizers since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, DG Okonjo-Iweala noted that several such restrictions have been phased out.

During the review period, WTO members introduced 182 new trade-facilitating and 110 trade-restrictive measures on goods unrelated to the pandemic. Most trade-facilitating measures were import measures and most trade-restrictive measures were export measures. For the third time since the beginning of the Trade Monitoring Exercise in 2009, the number of new export restrictions has outpaced that of import restrictions.

The trade coverage of trade-facilitating measures introduced during the review period was estimated at USD 703.7 billion (down from USD 1,160.5 billion in the last report) and that of trade-restrictive measures at USD 110.5 billion (down from USD 278.0 billion).

The stockpile of import restrictions in force remained important, with no sign of any meaningful roll-back of existing measures. By the end of 2022, 9.2% of global imports were affected by import restrictions implemented since 2009 and which are still in force.