According to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General's annual overview report on trade-related developments, WTO members showed restraint in the imposition of new trade-restrictive measures related to COVID-19 and continued to roll back restrictions adopted earlier in the pandemic.

However. despite a slowdown in new trade restrictions unrelated to the pandemic, the stockpile of unrepealed restrictive measures that has accumulated since the monitoring exercise started in 2009 now affects traded merchandise worth an estimated USD 1.5 trillion, or nearly 9% of world imports.

The report, which covers the period between mid-October 2020 and mid-October 2021, notes that since the outbreak of the pandemic, 399 COVID-19 trade and trade-related measures in goods have been implemented by WTO members and observers. Of these, 262 (66%) were of a trade-facilitating nature and 137 (34%) could be considered trade restrictive. Export restrictions accounted for 85% of all restrictive measures recorded 117 measures in total of which 59% had been repealed by mid-October 2021.

Despite the rollback, a total of 56 trade restrictions are still in place, of which 45 are export restrictions. Around 22% of the trade-facilitating measures have also been terminated, with 205 trade-facilitating measures still in force.

The trade coverage of ongoing COVID-19 trade-facilitating measures still in force was estimated at USD 112.1 billion while the coverage of trade-restrictive measures stood at USD 92.3 billion.

 

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