On 14 July 2016, the WTO announced that Liberia had joined the WTO as its 163rd member, after nearly 10 years of negotiating its accession terms with WTO members. Liberia is the eighth least-developed country (LDC) to accede to the WTO through negotiations. The announcement said:
The 30-day countdown to Liberia’s WTO membership was activated when Liberia’s Minister for Commerce and Industry, Axel Addy, handed to the WTOthe instrument of acceptance of Liberia’s Protocol of Accession on 14 June 2016
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Liberia’s Accession Package was approved by the Working Party members on6 October 2015 and by Ministers at the Nairobi Ministerial Conference on 16 December 2015.
Seven African countries are still negotiating their WTO accession, out of nineteen governments. The full list of WTO observers can be found here.
Liberia’s accession commitments can be found in the Accession Commitments Database. The database includes all accession commitments of the 35 members that have acceded to the WTO since the organization was established in 1995.
Learn more about Liberia’s WTO accession negotiations here.
