New Delhi, Oct 28 (PTI) The World Trade Organization on Thursday called on G20 countries to continue reducing pandemic-related trade restrictions and push for a strong response to COVID-19 at the forthcoming ministerial conference of the WTO in Geneva.

G20 members include India, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the US. The Geneva-based multilateral body World Trade Organization (WTO) frames rules for global exports and imports and adjudicates in trade disputes between member countries.

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According to the latest WTO Trade Monitoring Report on G20 trade measures, G20 economies have continued to roll back COVID-19-related trade-restrictive measures and demonstrated restraint in the imposition of new ones, but the value of trade covered by pandemic-related restrictions still in place now exceeds that of trade-facilitating measures.

"Ahead of a G20 leaders' summit in Rome this weekend, Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala called on G20 economies to continue to unwind pandemic-related trade restrictions and to push for a strong WTO response to the pandemic at the 12th Ministerial Conference," the WTO said in a statement.

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The 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12), the highest decision making body of the WTO, will take place from November 30 to December 3, 2021 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Okonjo-Iweala has stated that G20 economies must show leadership in helping WTO members deliver a strong response to the pandemic at MC12 as this would help all countries respond more effectively to COVID-19 and better prepare for future pandemics.

"To secure the recovery and extend it to include all countries, we must ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics. For this, we need smoothly functioning supply chains for these products, unimpeded by trade restrictions and other bottlenecks," she said.

According to the report, during the review period (mid-May to mid-October 2021) G20 economies generally demonstrated restraint in the imposition of new trade-restrictive measures related to the pandemic and are supporting the recovery by continuing to roll back restrictions adopted earlier in the crisis.

However, it added that despite the relatively low number of COVID-19 trade restrictions still in place, their estimated trade coverage was almost double (USD 88.4 billion) that of trade-facilitating measures (USD 48.2 billion).

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, 144 COVID-19 trade and trade-related measures in goods have been implemented by G20 economies. Of these, 105 were of a trade-facilitating nature and 39 could be considered trade restrictive, the organisation said.

"A total of 18 trade restrictions remained in place, of which 17 are export restrictions. Around 20 per cent of the trade-facilitating measures have been rolled back - 85 of those measures are still in place," it added.

Regarding non-COVID-related trade measures, 25 new trade-facilitating and 14 trade-restrictive measures on goods were recorded for G20 economies.

These reports have been prepared by the WTO Secretariat since 2009.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)