Addis Ababa — The accession process to WTO membership will by itself bring about internal development to Ethiopia's economy, experts in WTO accession and international trade disclosed at a seminar on "Lessons learned from previous WTO accession" held at Addis Ababa Hilton Hotel.

The experts said that the accession process causes Ethiopia to examine how competitive its laws, regulations and proclamations are in order to improve the country's legal and regulatory regimes in conformity with international standards.

According to the experts, the reforms Ethiopia will undertake to become a WTO member will facilitate the internal development of the economy because it will remove barriers and impediments and reduce costs to people doing business in the country.

The experts further said that becoming a member of WTO and the agreements with trading partners will open up foreign markets and remove obstacles to Ethiopian exports, which will be one of the major benefits for Ethiopia as the country's development strategy is to increase export.

The experts also noted that Ethiopia will have to go through some major pains while acceding to WTO and becoming a member.

"Going through the rather arduous process of the WTO accession and the negations with members to bring the country's legal and regulatory regimes into conformity with the WTO agreements and international standards will be the major challenges Ethiopia will have to go through," the experts said.

When WTO member countries open up their markets to Ethiopian goods, the country is expected to open its market to foreign goods.

"It is obvious that some goods will come in with cheaper, lower prices than is the case in Ethiopia and this will cause pains and perhaps some injuries to Ethiopian domestic producers and the markets," Ben Irvin, one of the experts and former Assistant Director of US Customs told The Daily Monitor. "Nevertheless that is part of the process because if producers cannot compete in their own market, how can they compete in the international market?" He said: "WTO forces a country to examine itself and to look at its competitiveness and increase its competitiveness through streamlining of procedures and reducing costs so that the country's products are not only competitive in the local market but also with goods imported to that country." The expert however said that being a WTO membership will later on payoff because foreign investors will come into the country, stimulate the market and increase the country's export which hopefully will create additional jobs.

"I know the fear is about losing jobs but the history of least developed countries (LDCs) whenever they join the WTO is that their economy generally grow- not just straight up but on incremental amount- while those LDCs who did not join the WTO have their economy going either flat or down," he said.

Ethiopia is one the least developed countries currently on the accession process to WTO membership.