IMF and WTO Sign Cooperation Agreement

• Author: Robert Sharer/Nur Calika
• Position: IMF Policy Development and Review Department
• Pages: 8-9

Page 8

On December 9, 1996, IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus and World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Renato Ruggiero signed a Cooperation Agreement between the two institutions.

The Agreement, which was signed during the WTO's first Ministerial Conference in Singapore (see page 5), seeks to formalize and build on the close, collaborative relationship that had evolved between the IMF and the contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The new agreement seeks to broaden this collaboration, taking into account the new mandate and operating modalities of the WTO.

Both the IMF and the WTO are committed to promoting policies and an environment conducive to achieving and sustaining economic growth. In particular, both organizations operate within mandates and areas of expertise that advance an international trade and payments system free of restrictions. The IMF does this by fostering international monetary cooperation and, through its surveillance over its members' exchange rates, by providing advice and balance of payments support to achieve macroeconomic stability and structural adjustment. The WTO promotes this common objective by providing a forum to enforce the legal rights and obligations of its members in the multilateral trading system and by furnishing a forum for the conduct of multilateral trade negotiations. WTO surveillance over its members' trade regimes also allows members to exercise peer pressure.

Mutual Obligations

In noting the globalization of markets, the preamble of the Cooperation Agreement points to the linkages in economic policymaking that fall within the mandates of the two organizations and sets out the relevant provisions on cooperation and/or consultation in the IMF's Articles of Agreement and the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO. The ensuing paragraphs detail the operative obligations of the IMF and the WTO; these include institutional consultations, staff attendance at each other's meetings, exchange of documents and information, staff consultations, and standard clauses on confidentiality and on implementation, review, and approval and termination.

Institutional consultations between the IMF and the WTO relate to:

* carrying out their respective mandates in accordance with the Agreement, thus providing the basis for institutional cooperation;

*...