WTO negotiations of the plurilateral agreement on investment facilitation reach a draft text

Since September 2020, a group of WTO members has been negotiating a new agreement on investment facilitation disciplines, following nearly 3 years of preparatory work. The negotiations for this Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFDA) have since advanced at a rapid pace. On December 16, 2022, the co-coordinators of the process—South Korea and Chile—issued a new negotiating text to WTO members, the Draft IFD Agreement (“Draft IFDA”). In the words of the co-coordinators, the Draft IFDA represents “a major milestone towards concluding a WTO Agreement on Investment Facilitation for Development.” The co-coordinators have announced that they expect the legal text of the agreement to be finalized at the latest by mid-2023. IISD recently published a report analyzing the text of the Draft IFDA and an article that highlights the main changes to the text from 2022 and the issues that members have yet to align on.