What is the Purpose of the World Commerce Organization?

The WCO was born in 1995, as the legal and institutional foundation for the multilateral system of commerce. Its coverage is wider than that of the GATT, for it includes, aside from manufacturing and agricultural products, services, intellectual property, and investment. Its basic functions are the following:

Manage and implement the multilateral and plurilateral agreements it represents.
Act as a forum for multilateral commerce negotiations.
Solve commercial disputes.
Guard national commerce policies.
Cooperate with other international institutions involved in the generation of global economic policies.

Multilateral negotiations under the auspices of the WCO are complex, and are based on four fundamental principles: establish commerce without discrimination, create increasing and predictable access to the markets, promote fair competition, and thrust development and economic reforms.

How can the WCO be useful to a common businessman? In many ways. The most important is the access to global markets, by means of eliminating obstacles to commerce, with the consequential advantage of increasing the possibilities of exporting his products to a wide range of countries. The standardization of tariffs and customs policies that the WCO seeks, reduces the effort that is needed to introduce products in diverse markets.