Multilateral Agreement On Investment

Multilateral Agreement on Investment in Global Commerce Policy

In this regard, multilateral agreement on investment is: MAI. The OECD Ministerial Council Meeting of June 1995 decided to launch negotiations for an agreement on investment liberalization which would also be open to OECD non-members. Ministers hoped that the agreement would contain high standards for liberalizing national investment regimes and that it would have effective dispute settlement provisions. The entries on trade policy are here. After a promising start the negotiations quickly got bogged down in nearly all areas as the complexities of the subject matter became clearer. Negotiators also were increasingly attacked by non-governmental organizations for their alleged secrecy and their purported aim to create an unhindered investment flow between member countries. Neither assessment was accurate, though negotiators were slow to make the negotiating text available publicly. More probably, the negotiations collapsed because of irreconcilable differences between members on key provisions and the increasingly incomprehensible language of the draft MAI as negotiators tried to reach compromises. Moreover, it appeared that very few non-member countries would seek to accede to the agreement. By 1998, when the negotiating deadline had been extended by one year, one sensed that some governments had decided that the political cost of the proposed agreement had become very high. Negotiations were abandoned in early 1999.[1]

Multilateral Agreement on Investmentin the wold Encyclopedia

For an introductory overview on international trade policy, see this entry.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Dictionary of Trade Policy, “Multilateral Agreement on Investment” entry (OAS)

See Also