Regional trade agreements

In 2015, the WTO received 16 new notifications about regional trade agreements (RTAs), down from 22 in 2014. The notifications involved eight new RTAs. Half of the RTAs were between developed and developing partners, maintaining a recent trend. The Asia Pacific region made the highest number of notifications – six RTAs – while the Americas made notifications about three RTAs. At the Tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, ministers called for a discussion of the systemic implications of RTAs for the multilateral trading system.