WTO Twelfth Ministerial Conference to take place in Geneva in late 2021

GENEVA. KAZINFORM WTO members have agreed that the organization’s Twelfth Ministerial Conference (MC12) will take place in the week of 29 November 2021 in Geneva, Switzerland. The timing and venue were endorsed at a meeting of the WTO’s General Council on 1 March.

MC12 was originally scheduled to take place from 8 to 11 June 2020 in Kazakhstan's capital, Nur-Sultan, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the WTO’s official website reads.

In May 2020, members discussed Kazakhstan's offer to reschedule the conference to June 2021. Reporting on his consultations with members last December, the chair of the General Council, Ambassador David Walker of New Zealand, said it was no longer realistic to envisage holding MC12 in June this year in light of the current situation. Kazakhstan told members that it shared this assessment.

MC12 will be chaired by Kazakhstan's Minister of Trade and Integration, Bakhyt Sultanov, as approved by WTO members in December 2019.

The Ministerial Conference, which is attended by trade ministers and other senior officials from the organization’s 164 members, is the highest decision-making body of the WTO. Under the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the WTO, the Ministerial Conference is to meet at least once every two years.

The Eleventh Ministerial Conference took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in December 2017.

Information on accreditation and other arrangements for MC12 will be made available on the WTO website in due course.

More information on the WTO’s Ministerial Conferences is available here.