Information Technology Agreement

Information Technology Agreement

Effective	1 July 1997
Depositary	World Trade Organization

Information Technology Agreement parties

The Information Technology Agreement (ITA) is a plurilateral agreement enforced by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and concluded in the Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products in 1996, and entered into force 1 July 1997. Since 1997 a formal Committee under the WTO watches over the following of the Declaration and its Implementations. The agreement was expanded in 2015.

The aim of the treaty is to lower all taxes and tariffs on information technology products by signatories to zero.

According to a 2017 study in the World Trade Review, the 2015 ITA expansion is "the most successful attempt at trade liberalization under the auspices of the WTO since its inception in 1995." The study credits the success of the negotiations to four factors: "a narrower scope without a single undertaking approach, a negotiating group that contained many but not all WTO members, a focus on tariffs rather than non-tariff barriers, and avoiding a nationalistic opposition."

External links

• Information Technology Agreement, WTO.
• ITA Schedules of Concessions, WTO.
• "Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products" (PDF) (text of the declaration). Singapore: World Trade Organization. 13 December 1996. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
• "Council for Trade in Goods – Implementation of the Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products" (WPF.ZIP or WPF.EXE). World Trade G/L/160 doc#97-1356; G/L/160/Add.1 doc#97-1935; G/L/160/Add.2 doc#97-3676 (text of the implementation with two "Note[s] by the Secretariat"). World Trade Organization. 2 April 1997; 5 May 1997; 17 September 1997. Retrieved 4 August 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)