Guest Post: Are We One Step Away from a Ministerial Decision to Incorporate the IFD Agreement into Annex 4?

This is a guest post from Antoine Comont (University of Bordeaux, Laval Universiy).

Adopted the 13th February 2024, the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFDA) was the subject of a draft decision for incorporation into Annex 4 of the WTO Agreement at the 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi. However, due to India’s blockage of consensus, the agreement could neither be placed on the agenda nor formally integrated into the WTO framework. The short interval between the proposal and MC13 left little room for multilateral discussions, making the absence of outcome largely predictable.

Since then, WTO Members have had the opportunity to discuss the draft decision on eleven occasions during General Council meetings. At each of these meetings, India, Turkey, and South Africa opposed the agreement for a range of reasons.

A first turning point emerged at the General Council meeting in December 2025, when South Africa indicated that instructions from its capital had evolved and that it would no longer oppose the agreement. Turkey also adopted a more moderate position regarding its opposition.

With the opening of MC14 in Yaoundé on 26 March, developments have accelerated further. During the opening session, the Turkish Ambassador officially announced that Turkey would not oppose the agreement. India now appears increasingly isolated. One thing, however, seems clear: the momentum is real.

First, in a press release circulated on 26 March as well, India’s Minister of Commerce noted that “On the IFD agenda, India supports initiatives that facilitate investment flows into developing countries, including LDCs.” This statement remains ambiguous. It is still unclear whether India will support, abstain, or continue to oppose a ministerial decision on the IFDA. So the door seems to be more open than it was at previous meetings. Second, from a political perspective, adopting such a decision at a Ministerial Conference carries greater symbolic weight than doing so at the level of the General Council. Third, the host country, Cameroon, is among the early participants in the IFDA. It therefore has a dual interest in securing the adoption of such a decision: demonstrating that its Ministerial was able to deliver tangible outcomes and advancing an agreement it actively supports.

That said, at a time when plurilateral initiatives and consensus-based decision-making lie at the heart of ongoing WTO reform debates, last-minute adjustments may be necessary to address India’s concerns.

On the legality of the procedure

It now appears widely accepted that Members to a plurilateral agreement may propose its incorporation into Annex 4 on their own initiative, provided that consensus is reached. Investment-related issues were previously the subject of multilateral discussions, as they formed part of the Singapore Issues included in the Doha Development Agenda in 2001. Although these discussions were removed from the multilateral agenda in 2004 following a General Council decision, this does not create a conflict between the multilateral agenda and the current plurilateral initiative.

On the WTO mandate

India and Turkey have argued that investment is not sufficiently linked to trade and therefore falls outside the WTO’s mandate. This argument is difficult to sustain. The WTO already includes investment-related disciplines, notably under the TRIMs Agreement and the GATS. Moreover, investment was previously subject to multilateral negotiations under a broader mandate than investment facilitation alone, and its removal from the agenda in 2004 was not based on a lack of WTO competence. It would therefore be inconsistent to consider investment as falling within the WTO’s mandate until 2004 but no longer thereafter.

More fundamentally, India’s concern may be less about mandate and more about precedent: incorporating the IFDA could open the door to other issues that India would prefer to keep outside the WTO framework, even on a plurilateral basis. One possible solution would be to include a paragraph in the ministerial decision stating that, “Considering the existing investment-related commitments within the WTO and the multilateral discussions initiated at the Singapore Ministerial Conference and pursued under the Doha Development Agenda, investment facilitation falls within the scope of the WTO’s mandate.” Such language could reassure India by clarifying that this incorporation does not automatically legitimize the inclusion of other, unrelated issues.

On the WTO budget

The budgetary implications of plurilateral agreements have long been a central concern for India. In response, Chile, Cambodia, Cameroon, the European Union, and Korea, have emphasized that “4.3. As for the WTO Secretariat's resources, it is important to stress that the WTO is a Member-driven organization. The Secretariat operates under the guidance of Members, and it is routine for it to provide logistical and technical support when a sizeable group of Members (in this case, 128 Members) requests assistance in pursuing discussions of their interest on a trade-related issue. Progress on an investment facilitation agreement does not come at the expense of other negotiating workstreams at the WTO (i.e., not a "zero-sum" choice between workstreams).” However, the main budgetary implications of plurilateral agreements arise not from the negotiation phase, but from their subsequent administration and implementation. The IFDA provides for the establishment of a committee, which will require administrative support from the Secretariat, as well as analytical work relating to implementation. These functions entail financial costs and the allocation of human resources that were not previously accounted for in the WTO budget.

Two options can be envisaged. The first would be to increase Members’ contributions, although non-participating Members may reasonably object to financing mechanisms in which they do not participate. The second would be to reallocate existing resources, which would likely come at the expense of other WTO functions. Neither option appears acceptable to India. A possible compromise would therefore be for participating Members to assume the additional budgetary costs associated with the agreement, a solution that could be reflected in the ministerial decision.

Taken together, these possible adjustments, the political momentum generated by MC14, and the shifts observed over the past three months suggest that a decision to incorporate the IFDA into Annex 4 may now be within reach.