Diplomats in the Swiss city have secured agreement on a key sticking point of a trade package to be put to ministers at a crunch summit next week: trade facilitation, which involves simplifying customs procedures to make commerce smoother.
It is one of the elements making up an overall trade package to be examined during the December 3rd-6th ministerial meeting at the Indonesian island of Bali.
But the WTO's 159 member states had until now been unable to bridge their differences on the subject, including over the delay developing countries would get to fall in line, and the support they would get from donors to do so.
On Thursday however, the WTO said there had been a "breakthrough on a key section of the Bali package", with the world's poorest countries to be given extra flexibility to implement the new rules under discussion.
"Because of this progress we will arrive in Bali with better momentum and a positive spirit," WTO chief Roberto Azevedo said in the statement.
The Bali meeting is seen as perhaps the last chance to revive the WTO's "Doha Round" of talks for a global trade liberalisation deal, estimated by Azevedo to be worth a trillion dollars.
Launched in 2001 at a summit in Qatar, the talks have foundered over deep-set disagreements between developing countries and developed countries on tariff and subsidies cuts.
Negotiators had long ruled out the chances of making any major progress in the Doha Round during the upcoming Bali meeting.
They have instead extracted parts of the Doha package, in the hopes that agreement on these smaller portions could then lend momentum for the wider Doha deal to be reached.
The package to be presented at Bali is made up of these extracted texts.
WTO rules require deals to be unanimous, and the Doha impasse has led many members to shift focus to negotiating deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership or a US-EU accord.
But such regional deals tend to involve richer countries, sidelining the poorest nations.
WTO
WTO sees turnabout in trade deal prospects
The World Trade Organization said on Thursday that negotiators have made a breakthrough in Geneva talks towards a major trade deal, just two days after the agency's chief signaled a stalemate.
ECONOMIC GROWTH
WTO slashes global growth forecast for 2015
Sluggish economies and global conflicts are taking their toll on world commerce, the Geneva-based World Trade Organization said on Tuesday as it slashed its trade growth outlook for 2015.
"For trade growth it is important that you have certain elements present in the global economy (including) stability, predictability, and those things are not there right now," WTO chief Roberto Azevedo told reporters in Geneva.
With economies around the world still struggling to fully recover from the 2008 financial crisis, and with conflicts flaring in places like Ukraine and the Middle East, global trade is expanding far more slowly than anticipated a year ago.
The Ebola outbreak in west Africa, unusually harsh winter weather in the United States and collapsing world oil prices are also taking their toll, as are strong exchange rate fluctuations, Azevedo said.
"All of these things have effects, sometimes destabilising effects," Azevedo said.
On Tuesday, WTO said preliminary estimates showed global trade had expanded just 2.8 percent last year and was expected to swell only 3.3 percent this year.
A year ago, the WTO was singing a different tune.
Last April, it had forecast that trade would expand 4.6 percent in 2014 and 5.8 percent this year.
But it downgraded those predictions in September, to 3.1 percent and four percent respectively, before slashing them further on Tuesday.
"Trade growth has been disappointing in recent years due largely to prolonged sluggish growth in GDP following the financial crisis," Azevedo said.
"Looking forward, we expect trade to continue its slow recovery, but with economic growth still fragile and continued geopolitical tensions, this trend could easily be undermined," he warned.
Last year was the third consecutive year in which trade grew less than three percent, WTO said in a statement.
In fact, trade growth averaged just 2.4 percent between 2012 and 2014 — the slowest rate on record for a three-year period when trade was expanding.
Trade growth is expected to pick up in 2016 with an expansion of four percent, it said, warning though that going forward, trade growth looks set to remain well below the annual average of 5.1 percent seen since 1990.
Slow recovery
"We are cautiously forecasting that trade will continue its slow recovery," Azevedo told reporters.
WTO acknowledged though that "risks to the trade forecasts are mostly on the downside."
Trade is a key measure of the health of the global economy, which it both stimulates and reflects.
But Azevedo warned Tuesday that a systemic shift might be under way and that trade expansion would no longer far outstrip overall economic growth as it has largely done for decades.
"The rough two-to-one relationship that prevailed for many years between world trade growth and world GDP growth appears to have broken down," WTO said.
The organization noted that "the 2.8 percent rise in world trade in 2014 barely exceeded the increase in world GDP for the year, and forecasts for trade growth in 2015 and 2016 only surpass expected output growth by a small margin."
Azevedo said that the 2015 forecast was based on an assumption that global GDP would expand by nearly three percent, while the 2016 forecast depended on economic growth reaching over three percent.
The International Monetary Fund announced later Tuesday that it expects to see global growth at a tepid 3.5 percent this year, and 3.8 percent next year.
WTO meanwhile said developing countries were expected to see exports rise 3.6 percent this year, while their imports were set to jump 3.7 percent.
In developed countries, exports and imports were set to rise just 3.2 percent, it said.
Asia was expected to have the strongest export rise at five percent, followed by North America at 4.5 percent.
The weakest export growth this year is predicted to come in South America with just 0.2 percent.
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