Facts about the WTO

The World Trade Organization's ninth ministerial conference finished Saturday on the Indonesian island of Bali with the first global agreement struck by the Geneva-based body since its 1995 founding.

Here are some facts about the trade body:

-- The WTO was established in January 1995 with the aim of helping global commerce flow as freely and fairly as possible.

It also oversees trade rules agreed by its members.

-- Based in Geneva, the WTO has 159 members. About three quarters of them are developing countries. Yemen was formally accepted as the 160th member at this week's meeting and its government now has six months to ratify the accession package.

-- The WTO replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which had laid down the rules of commerce since 1948. The GATT was part of a framework of international organisations including the International Monetary Fund and World Bank created after World War II to discourage policies such as protectionism considered to have aggravated the Great Depression of the 1930s. The GATT oversaw eight rounds of trade liberalisation negotiations.

-- The WTO was formed at the end of the GATT's Uruguay Round that ran from 1986 to 1994. WTO agreements cover not only goods, as was the case under the GATT, but also trade in services, inventions, creations and designs.

-- Although a procedure for settling disputes existed under the GATT, the WTO system is faster and more extensive, even though trade cases can still last for several years from an initial decision to a final appeals ruling.

WTO rulings are binding and cannot be blocked. Experts hear complaints, give rulings and authorise a country to impose sanctions against another WTO member.

Contentious issues have included aid for the aircraft and shipbuilding industries, trade in bananas, corporate tax breaks, Internet gambling, textiles, sugar and steel.

-- One of the key planks in all WTO accords aims to prevent countries from discriminating between trade partners. A special favour such as a lower customs duty rate granted to one partner has to apply to all other WTO members.

-- Ministers from member countries hold formal conferences at least once every two years: Singapore 1996, Geneva 1998, Seattle 1999, Doha 2001, Cancun 2003, Hong Kong 2005, and Geneva again in 2009 and 2011.

The conferences are the top decision-making body of the WTO, but ministers or ambassadors gather regularly in between for formal and informal sessions.

-- In November 2001, members meeting in the Qatari capital Doha launched a new "round" of talks to liberalise trade in new areas.

Known formally as the Doha Development Agenda, it aims to open markets and remove trade barriers such as subsidies, excessive taxes and regulations, in order to harness international commerce to develop poorer economies.

It was originally scheduled to run until the end of 2004. After the Cancun conference collapsed and the Hong Kong meeting made limited headway, the target was shifted to the end of 2006, but the talks have remained stalled.

This week's meeting in Bali was billed as a do-or-die attempt to breathe new life into the Doha Round under the WTO's new director general Roberto Azevedo.

-- The negotiations covered agriculture, including reducing subsidies and opening markets, liberalising services, including banking, insurance and tourism, and lifting barriers on non-agricultural products that range from industrial products to fish. But the concessions needed sparked clashes notably between China, the EU, India and the United States.

-- The agreement falls far short of the World Trade Organization's lofty but elusive vision of tearing down global trade barriers through its frustrating, 12-year-old Doha Round of talks. But it was nonetheless hailed as "historic" by the trade body.

-- The pact includes commitments to facilitate trade by simplifying customs procedures.

-- The Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated in a report this year the customs measures could create $1 trillion in economic activity and 21 million jobs if properly implemented.

Other issues under discussion were "trade facilitation," or smoothing the way for commerce by cutting red tape, as well as trade and the environment, intellectual property and "geographical indications" or place names used to identify products.

-- The WTO takes decisions on the basis of consensus among all members, not majority voting, making it notoriously difficult to sign off on a decision.

-- The ruling executive is the WTO General Council, which groups trade ambassadors from all member governments, while the WTO's director general runs its 640-strong Geneva secretariat and works to build momentum in the negotiations.