Press Releases
Appointment of new Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
(Statement by Foreign Minister MOTEGI Toshimitsu)
February 16, 2021
- Japan welcomes the appointment of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala from Nigeria as the new Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) by consensus of the Members on Monday, February 15.
- Japan considers it very significant that the first female Director-General from Africa is inaugurated as the head of this international organization which embodies diversity with many memberships from developing countries in light of maintaining and reinforcing the multilateral trading system. Japan hopes that the new Director-General will address a myriad of challenges facing the WTO thorough cooperation with the Members, by demonstrating her deep expertise and experiences, her caliber of coordination with major countries, as well as her managerial ability to run multilateral institutions, which she has previously cultivated in her distinguished capacities as Foreign Minister and Finance Minister of Nigeria, Managing Director of the World Bank, as well as Chair of the Board of Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).
- Japan strongly supports the WTO Secretariat led by DG Okonjo-Iweala in close coordination with other Members, and actively continues to lead multilateral cooperation for recovering the world’s economy, which is still suffering from the COVID-19, and for urgently carrying out the WTO reform.