Oil kingdom aware of its value

Accession of the 149th member nation follows 12 years of secretive haggling

Nobody wants to talk about why Saudi Arabia's WTO accession process dragged on for more than 12 years. The world's largest oil producer has had 'some very active and some very quiet periods' along the way to its formal accession as the 149th member nation on December 11, according to World Trade Organisation secretariat staff.

Accession proceedings are often complicated as nations haggle over which sectors to include in talks and how far they should open to foreign investment. But the unique political and religious situation in the kingdom and the high degree of secrecy surrounding negotiations caused the process to take longer than for other countries of a similar size. People are willing to talk in broad terms about the timescale but are reluctant to go into details.

'To us it's not strange [that the accession process took so long]. In fact, it reflects the richness of our economy,' according to Dr Hashim Yamani, the Saudi Minister of Commerce and Trade. He says the process was drawn out because so many countries initiated bilateral requests through the WTO framework out of their interest in gaining access to the Saudi market.

Considering oil exports will top US$174 billion this year and the Riyadh stock exchange has daily trading volumes double those of Hong Kong, it is easy to see the attraction of opening the Saudi market. 'Saudi Arabia's accession is particularly important for both WTO and the Middle East,' says Thomas Donohue, president and chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington. 'The country has been ruled by one family for a long time and been run by a narrow set of economic arrangements.'

In fact, it was the US, Saudi Arabia's largest and staunchest ally, which proved the most demanding of the 38 countries that formally requested bilateral negotiations, according to sources involved in the multilateral accession discussions.

Dr Yamani is diplomatic in his explanation: 'The Americans have always been very precise and fair. They have been the most interested in all aspects of our economy and they have the right to be so because they are our No1 trading partner.'