Information Technology Agreement
The WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA) entered into force on 1 July 1997. Under the Agreement, tariffs on information technology products were eliminated on 1 January 2000, with a few limited exceptions. Australia was involved from the outset in the ITA negotiations and was one of the original 29 countries to sign the Agreement. The Australian schedule covers around 190 tariff lines.
There are currently 44 participants in the Agreement (covering 69 WTO members and States or separate customs territories in the process of acceding to the WTO), representing approximately 97 per cent of world trade in information technology products.