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The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established in:
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Answer: Option B — 1995
Detailed Solution
The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established on 1 January 1995. It replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which had been signed in 1947 and had regulated world trade in goods since 1948. The WTO was created by the Marrakesh Agreement, signed in Marrakesh, Morocco, in April 1994, at the end of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations (1986-1994). Its headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland.
The WTO is the only global international organisation dealing with the rules of trade between nations. Its main functions are to:
Administer WTO trade agreements.
Provide a forum for trade negotiations.
Settle trade disputes between members through its Dispute Settlement Body; however, its Appellate Body has been non-functional since December 2019 because of a block on appointments.
Monitor national trade policies.
Provide technical assistance and training for developing countries.
Unlike GATT, which covered only trade in goods, the WTO also covers trade in services (through GATS, the General Agreement on Trade in Services) and intellectual property rights (through TRIPS, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). The Agreement on Agriculture deals with farm subsidies and market access.
The highest decision-making body of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference, which usually meets every two years. The 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) was held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, in February-March 2024, and MC14 was scheduled for Yaoundé, Cameroon, in March 2026. The WTO has 166 members. India is a founding member of both GATT (1947) and the WTO (1995). Decisions are generally taken by consensus. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria is the Director-General, the first woman and first African to hold the post.
Why not the other options?
- ✗1947 is the year GATT was signed.
- ✗1991 is the year of India's economic reforms.
- ✗2001 is the year the Doha Development Round was launched and China joined the WTO.
Quick tip
Remember: WTO = 1 January 1995 (replaced GATT, 1947), Marrakesh Agreement (1994), Geneva, covers goods, services (GATS) and IPR (TRIPS); DG Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
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International Economic Organisations — Preparation
This question tests your understanding of International Economic Organisations, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.
This topic covers international economic and financial organisations: the IMF, the World Bank group, the WTO, the Asian Development Bank, the New Development Bank, the AIIB, OPEC, the OECD and groupings such as the G20, along with their headquarters, founding and functions. Questions usually ask where an organisation is headquartered, when it was set up, and what it does. For example, the IMF and World Bank were created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the WTO replaced GATT in 1995, and the New Development Bank, set up by the BRICS countries, is headquartered in Shanghai. Practise the international economic organisations questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.