(Yicai Global) March 18 -- Negotiations at the World Trade Organization over global e-commerce rules are progressing well, authoritative sources told Yicai Global.

George Mina, co-convener of the talks and Australia’s ambassador and permanent representative to the WTO, said at a plenary meeting on March 16 that they aim to provide a clear text in 10 areas before the summer break.

The moderators of various panel discussions have reported on the work done over the past few weeks to narrow the gap between the text proposals at the plenary session, according to a Geneva-based trade official.

Seventy-six WTO members, including China and the European Union, signed the Joint Statement on Electronic Commerce in early 2019, confirming the start of talks on trade-related e-commerce issues based on existing WTO agreements and frameworks. The number of members taking part in the talks has now reached 86.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in a previous interview with Yicai Global that she believed e-commerce is the wave of the future, but the WTO has no rules to support e-commerce, so how to form these rules will be very important.

The proposals cover a number of issues, including online consumer protection, paperless transactions, open government data, source codes, and open internet access, the official told Yicai Global.

Also, the moderator of the electronic signature and identity verification team reported at the plenary meeting that the plain text on e-signature and identity verification would be available soon.

The participants also held detailed discussions on the topic of “digital trade facilitation and logistics” at the meeting, covering a total of eight sub-themes, Yicai Global learned. For various reasons the negotiating parties were unable to discuss these sub-themes in groups last year.

The talks are based on text proposals submitted by WTO members and are conducted through a combination of plenary meetings, focus group discussions, and panel discussions. The current discussions cover six topics: enabling e-commerce, openness and e-commerce, trust and e-commerce, cross-domain issues, telecommunications, and market access.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Peter Thomas