Motor vehicles, agricultural products, footwear, toys, steel, iron and copper ores, lithium carbonate and licensing regimes in general, were among the import licensing issues discussed when the committee handling this subject reviewed 46 information documents from members on 30 October 2006 and completed its latest biennial review.
The meeting also reviewed China's implementation of the Import Licensing Agreement, the fifth of eight annual reviews as agreed in China's membership deal.
The committee's biennial review was the sixth for examining the agreement's implementation. (A report covering 1 October 2004 to 30 October 2006 will soon be released and available here).
The committee's main purpose is to ensure members' licensing regimes are transparent. But once again, the chairperson commented that members are not meeting their obligations to keep each other informed — and up-to-date — about their import licensing rules and procedures: 20 members have never notified anything.
And in the past two years only 38 members (counting the EU as one) have submitted the replies to the questionnaire they are supposed to answer annually (the deadline was 30 September).
Argentina's regime for footwear and toys: the US remains concerned that licensing requirements are unjustified and the licences take too long to issue.
It questioned whether the requirement for toys could be justified since producers in Argentina do not face the same requirements and asked for more information.
Argentina told the committee that its replies to the annual questionnaire do contain more information on this.
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