Tajik officials and the working party, established by the WTO General Council on 18 July 2001, gave very optimistic statements regarding the accession of Tajikistan to WTO. Tajikistan submitted the membership application to WTO in May, 2001 and since then many meetings were held and millions were spent to make all necessary arrangements for smooth accession to WTO.

From January 21 to 25 of current year a WTO delegation paid (rus) a visit to Tajikistan to discuss the remaining issues. Mr. Clyde Kull, the head of the working party, pointed out that they together with Tajik G-men worked out a proper and transparent legislation that meets WTO requirements. Personally I often hear people say that our legislation de jure is one of the best in CIS but de facto is not always enforced as desired.

The members of the working party are quite significant countries such as USA, Canada, EU countries, Japan, Australia and China which are interested in conducting trade with Tajikistan. Very promising. So what are the advantages of being WTO member for Tajikistan? Membership will provide Tajikistan an opportunity to defend its interests along with other members on equal terms through discussions and negotiations on the collective basis. They say that flow of foreign goods into Tajikistan will have a good impact on Tajik private sector promoting fair competition and providing people with wide range of products. In this case, the demerit is that unprotected branches (for instance, field of services) of national economy will mostly lose their positions on the market and thus, most probably, face serious difficulties. Taking into account the fact that most of the fields could be referred as unprotected and unstable, I may assume that membership will give our economy hard time.

According to well-known Tajik economist Hojimahmad Umarov, Tajikistan will only win from membership. He believes that membership will improve the image of Tajikistan for foreign investors and make Tajikistan look more trustworthy. Nevertheless, in my opinion we have to consider all the side effects and thoroughly scrutinize the case of Kyrgyzstan, China, Viet Nam, Armenia, etc. to be able to tackle all the challenges that will certainly emerge once we become a member of WTO. It is hard to predict when exactly Tajikistan will be ready for accession but the process has started long ago and sooner or later Tajikistan will definitely become a member of WTO and join the rest of the crew.