UAE set to host world’s largest trade minister meeting in 2024

The United Arab Emirates edged out Cameroon to host the World Trade Organization’s 2024 ministerial conference, the largest global gathering of trade ministers.

The meeting, scheduled in Abu Dhabi for the week of Feb. 26, 2024, will come at a critical time for a slowing global economy that’s reeling from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an ongoing pandemic, and a simmering trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Cameroon will host the next such meeting, the WTO said on Monday.

WTO ministerial meetings are generally held biennially and often provide political impetus to advance international trade negotiations. 

For the UAE, hosting the meeting is part of its own push to position itself as a global hub for business amid growing competition in the Middle East. It has been rolling out bilateral trade deals with fast-growing markets since the pandemic. Next year the Gulf Arab state will host COP 28, the UN’s Climate Change conference.

The top priority for the WTO’s 13th ministerial conference, known as MC13, will be reaching an agreement to reform the trade body’s hobbled dispute settlement system and modernizing its 27-year-old rulebook.

Most nations want to restore the WTO’s appellate body — a sort of supreme court for trade — which the US crippled in 2019, citing systemic problems with the way its members settle trade disputes.

MC13 will also provide a forum for WTO members to complete the unfinished work of their 2022 ministerial conference, which produced an agreement to water down patent protections for Covid-19 vaccines and a deal to curb harmful fishery subsidies.