On July 29 this year, Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Investment and Foreign Trade of the Republic of Uzbekistan S. Umurzakov headed the 4th meeting of the Interdepartmental Commission for Work with the World Trade Organization (WTO) via video-conferencing. This event involved the members of the Group of Negotiations on Uzbekistan's accession to the WTO.

During the meeting, the attendees discussed the upcoming 4th meeting of the Working Group on the Republic of Uzbekistan's accession to the WTO.

They agreed that considering the current epidemiological situation, the 4th meeting of the Working Group on the Republic of Uzbekistan's accession to the WTO is expected on July 7 this year as hybrid meeting, where delegations from foreign diplomatic missions in Geneva will attend the meeting room of the Organization’s headquarters and the experts of the Group, including the delegation of Uzbekistan, will participate via video-conferencing.

The resumption of the WTO accession process appeared in the Strategy for the Further Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan in 2017-2021, and is one of the key areas of development of the country's foreign economic activity due to its integration into the multilateral trading system. From this perspective, the attendees emphasized that the accession to the WTO is an important task and requires the prompt resolution of a number of issues affecting some factors of social and economic development of the country.

They paid attention to the critical importance of further improvement of the work of the Group of Negotiations and task forces to prepare documents related to accession to the WTO.

The meeting resulted in a number of decisions aimed at effective organization of the 4th meeting of the Working Group and negotiations in general, as well as an encouragement of responsibility of the Group of Negotiations.