Capacity building of Government officials is completed

In-depth training sessions on countervailing duty investigations, injury/causality assessment, procedural aspects of trade defence investigations and dispute settlement have been implemented in May 24 and 27, 2022. Training sessions combined theoretical and practical presentations with exercises. Eleven officials from the State Antimonopoly and Consumer Market Control Service, which hosts the trade defence unit, and Ministry of Economy have participated in the training. In October and November 2021, Government officials had participated in 3 training sessions on anti-dumping.

The materials relating to these trainings will be available in the “Areas” section of this web portal shortly.

Support provided to the State Service on this matter is part of the ongoing efforts to fully operationalise the trade defence unit.

The above training has been provided by a senior trade defence expert of the EU-funded “Strengthening capacity of the Government of Azerbaijan in the WTO Accession negotiations and other trade related activities” project.

Earlier in May, two round tables on tariff rate quotas (TRQs) and transport services were presented online.

A tariff rate quota is an an import regime in which quantities inside a quota are charged lower import duties, than those outside (which can be high). During the round table, the conditions for using TRQs under the WTO rules were presented and discussed. Recently acceded members such as Kazakhstan have reserved the right to use TRQs to control the volume of imports of certain sensitive agricultural goods such as beef, pork or poultry meat.

The round table on transport services reviewed the commitments made by WTO members in respect of road transport, rail transport, maritime transport, auxiliary services, pipeline transport and air transport. The requests made to Azerbaijan by certain Working Party Members were presented and various aspects discussed.

Participants to the round tables on TRQs and transport services included officials from the Ministries of Economy, Finance, Agriculture and Digital Development and Transport as well as State Customs Committee and State Service for Antimonopoly and Consumer Market Control.