The sixth of a series prepared by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development. The 1996 Singapore Ministerial Declaration mandated the establishment of working groups to analyse issues related to investment, competition policy and transparency in government procurement. It also directed the Council for Trade in Goods to "undertake exploratory and analytical work […] on the simplification of trade procedures in order to assess the scope for WTO rules in this area." Most developing countries were unconvinced of the necessity or value of negotiating multilateral rules on these issues, which they see as being of primary interest to developed economies.
