The GATT [General Agreement on Trade and Tariff] was a multilateral treaty which has been signed by 96 governments known as contracting parties. 31 other countries had applied to GATT. It was neither an organization nor a court of justice. It was simply a multinational treaty which covered 80% of the World Trade, it was a decision making body with a code of rules for the conduct of international Trade and mechanism for trade liberalization. It was a forum where the contracting parties met from time to time to discuss and solve the trade problems and also negotiated to enlarged the trade under GATT rules provided for the settlement of trade disputes called for consultation waived trade obligation and even authorized measures. The achievements of GATT are.

 The GATT was a permanent international organization having a permanent council of representatives with headquarters at Geneva. Its function was to call international conference to decide on trade liberalization on a multilateral basis.

 Achievement of GATT

The GATT secretariat estimated the following gains as the result of the round agreement and their implementations

1. Income and trade: the estimated games are: a] 510 billion dollars increase in annual world income by 2005. b] World Trade in goods higher by dollar 745 billion in the year 2005. largest increase in world trade in goods, by 60% in clothing, 20% in agriculture forestry and fishery production and 19% in process food and beverages. c] Increase in export and import of the developing and transition economics as a group by 50% above the average increase for the World Trade as a whole.
2. Tariff reduction: In the round developed and developing countries abandoned several of their respective and discretionary trade and industrial policy tools. as a result there has been higher level of tariff “bindings” binding mean that they have enter the freedom to use the protectionist instruments of the past. tariff binding and reduction has been as under. a]Tariff binding in developed countries on industrial products increase from 78% to 99% and from 22% to 72% in developing countries. b] in agriculture the binding of the developed countries from 81% to 100% and of the development countries from 22% to 100%. c] tariff on industrial goods in developed countries reduced from 6.3 to 3.9%. d] progress in reducing tariff escalation which would benefit developing countries seeking to export more process primary products. e] above average tariff cuts from many products of export interest to developing countries
3. Market access: There were several areas in the round that related to market access. The important one was tariffs, textiles and garments and agriculture.
4. Tariffs: in developed countries industrial tariffs reduced on an average to 4 percent they are no longer significant barriers to trade developing countries also reduce the tariff considerably
5. Textiles and clothing: The textile and clothing agreement also forms part of market access a major achievement of the Uruguay round was the commitment to integrate this sector into a multilateral framework the integration of the sector into the GATT rules 1994 would take place in four phases by January 1 2005 when all products would be integrated.
6. Agriculture: The agriculture agreement content minimum market access commitment on agriculture product, its sought. a] to open national market to world competition by replacing non tariff barriers with normal customs duties. b] to check over production progressively reducing government aids. c] to reduce subsidies along with the volume of subsidized exports.
7. Rules and disciplines: the Uruguay round also strengthen multilateral rules and disciplines the most important of this related to subsidies and countervailing measures, anti dumping safeguards and disputes settlements rules concerning dispute settlement have been made time bound automatic and judicial in approach under the WTO.

• TRIMS: Trade related investment measures prohibit investment measures that are inconsistent with national treatment or general elimination of quantitative restriction. developing countries have been given 5 years to phase out inconsistent TRIMS and developed countries 2 years

• TRIPS: The URUGUAY round also contain the agreement on trade related intellectual property rights. it provide norms and standards for copyrights and related rights, trademarks, geographical indication, industrial designs, patents, layout designs of integrated circuits trade secrets and protection of undisclosed information, the agreement allowed 1 year for developed countries, 5 years for developing and 11 years for least developed countries to change their loss for the implementation of TRIPS.

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