CAMEROON TRADE POLICY COMPLIANCE WITH WTO’S PRINCIPLES: CHALLENGES FOR TRADE LIBERALIZATION

Abstract

The increase number of countries membership to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has created many doubts. Many developing countries have joined the WTO. About two thirds of the WTO around 164 members are developing countries. They play an increasing important and active role in the WTO because of their numbers, because they are becoming more important in global economy, and because they increasingly look to trade as a vital tool in their development efforts. Accepting that the WTO’s Agreement contains special provisions on developing countries, this paper seeks to evaluate how far these special provisions aid in the advancement of trade in developing countries in particular and international trade in general. This piece also explores an overview of Cameroon’s trade profile, its compliance with and implementation of the WTO’s principles, while establishing the difficulties faced. The fact that the WTO cannot adequately provide an equal protection to member states, developing countries has tend to engage into Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) so as to better liberalize trade, protect their domestic industry and enhance trade. This has raised contradiction under the organization which this paper intends to investigate. To achieve this objective and to deal with the research problem, we undertook desk research in libraries, relevant documentation centers, internet websites which enable us to review existing literature on the question. The findings reveal that despite the fact that Cameroon is one of the founding member of the WTO, it has not only waived most of the WTO policies, but it is grossly lacking at the level of implantation of the few WTO rules acceded to. The work concludes with some recommendations.