At the WTO’s first Ministerial Conference in Singapore, a group of members agreed to pursue duty-free trade in a defined set of information technology products. This step created the political mandate for what became the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) and linked trade rules to the fast-growing global electronics sector.
Ministers issued the Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products, defining a list of covered goods and the basic method for making commitments legally effective. Participants agreed to bind their tariffs at zero for the covered products by scheduling those commitments in their WTO tariff schedules, using most-favoured-nation (MFN) treatment so the cuts apply to all WTO members.
Following the Singapore decision, participants began the technical work of converting the ministerial declaration into enforceable tariff commitments. This required detailing how each government would apply zero duties in its tariff schedule and aligning product classifications under the Harmonized System used for customs.
The ITA entered into force after sufficient participation was reached and members had scheduled their commitments. The agreement’s core effect was to eliminate tariffs (and certain other duties and charges) on the covered IT products among participants, with the cuts applied on an MFN basis.
As participants implemented their schedules, duty-free treatment on the ITA list became a common baseline for major categories such as computers, semiconductors, and telecommunications-related equipment. The agreement also created a standing framework to discuss classification issues and future updates as technology changed.
By the early 2010s, the WTO highlighted that the ITA had expanded well beyond its original participants and covered the vast majority of global trade in ITA products. This demonstrated how a “plurilateral” deal (joined by some, not all, WTO members) could still have wide impact because of MFN tariff application.
Members started formal talks to update the ITA list to reflect newer generations of information and communications technology goods that were not widely traded when the original list was created. The push to expand coverage reflected both rapid innovation (new product types) and rising trade volumes in advanced components and devices.
Negotiators reached agreement on the list of additional products to be covered by an ITA expansion, a key breakthrough after years of discussions. The goal was to extend zero-tariff treatment to “new-generation” products—such as certain advanced semiconductors and other modern ICT goods—whose trade had grown substantially since the 1990s.
At the WTO Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, participating members announced the conclusion of the ITA expansion (often called “ITA-II”). The expansion added 201 products and was described as a major WTO tariff-elimination result, with many participating governments committing to phase tariffs out either immediately or over staged periods.
By the end of 2015, the ITA story from 1996 reached a clear turning point: the original tariff-free framework was modernized to cover a much broader range of ICT products. The outcome was a larger duty-free product set under WTO rules, intended to reduce trade costs for widely used technologies and to better match trade rules to the post-1990s technology economy.
After the Nairobi conclusion, participants began implementing their tariff-elimination schedules for the newly covered products, with many duties reduced to zero immediately and others phased out over several years. The WTO noted that, although concluded by a subset of members, the MFN structure meant all WTO members benefited from duty-free access to participants’ markets for these covered goods.
To support implementation and clarity in customs treatment, the WTO maintained detailed product coverage information for both the original ITA and the expansion. This helped governments and traders map evolving technology products to Harmonized System (HS) codes and apply the promised tariff rates correctly.
Information Technology Agreement and its 2015 Expansion (1996–2015)