General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

The fifteenth regular session of the contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was held in Tokyo from October 26 to November 20, 1959. The first three days of the session were devoted to an exchange of views between ministerial representatives of the contracting parties, at the conclusion of which a communiqué was published, whereby the ministers: 1) agreed that, as a result of the action taken in recent months by certain countries to make their currencies convertible for non-residents, there was no longer any justification on balance-of-payments grounds for discriminatory restrictions by countries with export earnings largely in convertible currencies; 2) considered that rapid progress could thenceforth be made in elimination of all quantitative restrictions on imports by countries no longer experiencing balance-of-payments difficulties; 3) laid great emphasis on the importance of making every effort to help less developed countries which had not shared fully in the improvement of economic conditions; 4) made frequent reference to the possibly disruptive effect of a sharp increase in exports of manufactured goods from countries where the cost of production was substantially lower than that prevailing in importing countries; and 5) agreed that regional economic arrangements such as the European Economic Community (EEC) or the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) were required to take full account of the trade interests of other countries and to pursue outward-looking policies in accordance with principles and objectives of GATT.