Cairo- Palestine Economy Portal.

Palestine participated in the fourth meeting of the Technical Restrictions Committee on Trade today, Sunday, at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Arab League, within the framework of the Greater Arab Free Trade Area chaired by Egypt and the participation of representatives of Arab member states.

Bahjat Abu Al-Nasr, Director of the Economic Integration Department at the Arab League, said in a statement that the meeting is devoted over a period of three days to discuss the draft legal text amending the annex on technical restrictions on trade within the framework of the Greater Arab Free Trade Area. Explaining that preparing this supplement will have positive repercussions on Free trade area.

He added that the General Secretariat received notes from six Arab countries "Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar", in addition to the Arab Organization for Industrial Development and Mining on that draft with the aim of finalizing the draft.

Abu Al-Nasr clarified that the mechanism for dealing with technical restrictions on trade is an integral part of any trade agreement between member countries within the framework of the World Trade Organization, unlike the Free Trade Zone, which was originally based on the Arab Agreement on Trade Development and Facilitation of 1981, and therefore such a mechanism is not included. In the FTA agreement, hence the importance of adding a special legal annex on the subject of technical restrictions on trade to the Greater Arab Free Trade Agreement.