Commerce Minister paid a courtesy call on the WTO’s Director-General

A part of his last-week official mission to Geneva, Republic of Switzerland, H.E. PAN Sorasak, Cambodia’s Minister of Commerce, led a delegation to pay a courtesy call on H.E. Roberto Azevêdo Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to discuss the challenges in establishing regional free trade agreements that may have a negative impact on Cambodia and the preparation of Cambodia’s trade policies in order to join the WTO’s Trade Policy Review (TPR) in the next year.

H.E. Roberto Azevêdo, expressed his felicitations to Cambodia who will become Chairman of the Least-Developed Countries (LDCs), and he believes that Cambodia will successfully lead and help the poorest members in negotiating for the package benefits such as Duty-Free and Quota-Free (DFQF) market access for their products, rules of origin, services expanding, and cotton products trading. The Director General also requested Cambodia to urge its LDC members to support the inclusion of online businesses (E-Commerce) into the agenda of the upcoming ministerial negotiations.

In response, Excellency Minister informed the Director General that the Royal Government of Cambodia has long supported and paid attention to the benefits of E-Commerce. As a matter of fact, Cambodia has been preparing and pushing the Law on E-Commerce to be enacted soon. Excellency Minister further said that the Law Review Committee has been established and functioned well under his leadership. “Our committee have been regularly meeting to review the progress of E-commerce Law, Commercial Contract Law, Consumers Protection and so on” “As the chairman of LDCs, Cambodia encourages its members to endose the E-Commerce and is ready to assist and provide technical support to other LDCs such as Timo-Leste to join the ASEAN and the WTO,” H.E. Sorasak added.