The World Trade Organization (WTO) welcomed Russia in August of last year as its 156th member — the last of the world’s large economies to join. The process, taking nearly two decades, had been steeped in anxiety and high expectations within Russia.
Now that Russian firms and their foreign counterparts can better grasp the practical consequences of WTO membership, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, and regional development officials are turning to the nuts and bolts of membership. Moscow-based CIPE partner the International Institute of Management for Business Associations (IIMBA) is at the forefront of these efforts, holding a raft of classes and webinars designed to help Russian businesses understand the promises and pitfalls of WTO membership. IIMBA is helping shape the discussion on the issue, taking a no-nonsense approach free of the sparring which grabs headlines having to do with U.S. agricultural imports and Russian rules benefitting the automobile industry.
On March 5, CIPE helped introduce a highly-informed U.S. point of view into IIMBA’s ongoing WTO series with a presentation by Elizabeth Hafner, Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Russia and Eurasia at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Hafner, based in Washington DC, first gave a presentation on the benefits of WTO membership for Russian businesses via webcast from CIPE’s Washington office. She then took live questions from some of the 182 participants connected to the webinar from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and a host of Russian cities including St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Moscow, and Ufa. Watch a webcast of the presentation.
