The WTO was founded in 1995 as the successor organization to the General Agreement on Trade and Tari (GATT). GATT was established in 1948 with 23 countries as the global trade organization to administer all multilateral trade agreements by providing equal opportunities to all countries in the international market for trading purposes.
WTO is expected to establish a rule based trading regime in which nations cannot place arbitrary restrictions on trade. In addition, its purpose is also to enlarge production and trade of services, to ensure optimum utilization of world resources and to protect the environment.
The WTO agreements cover-trade in goods as well as services to facilitate international trade (bilateral and multilateral) through removal of tariff as well as non-tariff barriers and providing greater market access to all member countries.
