The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Thursday announced that the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) got rubber-stamped, being officially inserted into the rule book of WTO.

This advance that broke the about-four-month-old impasse on implementation of the Bali package reached last December at the WTO Ministerial Conference was achieved after the consensus of all WTO members at a special meeting of General Council, the decision-making body of the world trade watchdog.

Roberto Azevedo, Director-General of WTO, told reporters after the meeting held this afternoon that WTO members this afternoon adopted a protocol of amendments of TFA to formally insert the new agreement into the WTO system.

TFA, the first-ever multilateral pact sealed in WTO's nearly two-decade history, was designed to take global reform of customs procedures to improve efficiency of trade across borders.

It was regarded as breakthrough in multilateral trade negotiations, and was estimated to boost the world economy by the equivalent of 1 trillion U.S. dollars per year. As required by decisions adopted in Bali, WTO members must draft a Protocol of Amendments to insert the new agreement into the WTO system before July 31 this year.

But this deadline was missed due to India's objection.

India has set conditions for signing the trade facilitation agreement: it must see more progress on a parallel agreement which would give it more freedom to subsidize and stockpile food grains.

The deadlock caused by India' unyielding stance was broken after its agreement reached with the United States earlier this month on public stockpiling of food, which paved the way for the full implementation of TFA that has been stalled for months, as highlighted by both sides and WTO itself.

Azevedo told reporters that the successful adoption of the related protocol kicked off the ratification process, and members will follow their own procedures to ratify the agreement and then hand to WTO the instrument of acceptance.

"This decision means TFA facility is now operational," said the WTO head.

The protocol was originally scheduled to open for acceptance until July 2015. Then the TFA will enter into force once two-thirds of members have completed their domestic ratification process.

At the moment, no words have been said on whether the second deadline will be abided by or not.

Apart from finally clinching the vital multilateral trade deal, WTO members also agreed on two other decisions at Thursday's meeting: food subsidies and stockpiling, the once sticking point that was also among the Bali decisions, and as well as the post-Bali work program on remaining Doha Development Agenda issues.

The first decision clarified that the "peace clause," which protects member states from being penalized for breaching their subsidy levels until a permanent solution is found on good security program issues, will remain in force till such a permanent solution is reached.

Moreover, it moved the target date to conclude related negotiations up to Dec. 31, 2015, way ahead of the previous deadline of 2017 set in Bali.

"If no solution is reached by this new target date, the peace clause will simply remain in place and in effect until negotiations do conclude and a permanent solution is adopted," said Azevedo.

As for the post-Bali work program, the deadline for mapping out the steps in pushing global trade and Doha round was pushed back to July 2015, rather than the original date scheduled for this year's December.

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