1.6.2. Singapore ministerial meet

It was at the first ministerial conference of the WTO in Singapore in 1996. It brought up four possible areas, popularly known as ‘Singapore Issues’ - trade and investment; trade and competition policy; trade facilitation; and transparency in government procurement.

Among these, only ‘trade facilitation’ is directly related to trade, while other three are only indirectly related to trade. Developed countries wanted to include all these areas in negotiations. However, countries like India felt that having a multilateral agreement on issues like investment and competition policy would be a serious impingement on the sovereign rights of countries.