UKRAINE JOINS WTO, FULL MEMBERSHIP COMES AFTER RATIFICATION OF ACCESSION PROTOCOL

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President Viktor Yushchenko and World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy have signed a protocol on Ukraine's WTO accession.

The instrument has been signed based on a decision of the WTO General Council that approved a report of the Working Party on Ukraine's WTO accession.

Ukraine applied for WTO membership in 1993, but it started working actively on the issue in 2005 only.

Ukraine will have to ratify the deal by July 4, 2008 and would become a WTO member 30 days after the ratification.

Ukraine's President Victor Yushchenko declared that "Ukraine's membership to the WTO is truly an historic moment and is a decisive milestone in the development of our economy. We are convinced that our efforts will yield results and allow us to build closer economic ties worldwide." He assured that he along with the Government and Verkhovna Rada will make their best to ensure that all procedural requirements are fulfilled in the shortest possible time. Among the advantages of Ukraine's WTO accession, the President named annual GDP growth by 1.5-1.7 percent, lack of producers' losses from antidumping investigations, growth of foreign direct investments, increase in the export of production of the metallurgic industry by 26 percent, and boost of the chemical industry products by 27 percent.

"Ukraine will never initiate and support any artificial and unjustified obstacles to the negotiation process on WTO's accession for any country. We fully back Russia's WTO accession. Ukraine will do its best for Russia's shortest possible accession to the WTO," the Ukrainian President stressed.

UKRINFORM