how many member countries are there in wto at present
164
title: General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade text: founding members of the WTO on 1 January 1995. The other 52 GATT members rejoined the WTO in the following two years (the last being Congo in 1997). Since the founding of the WTO, 21 new non-GATT members have joined and 29 are currently negotiating membership. There are a total of 164 member countries in the WTO, with Liberia and Afghanistan being the newest members as of 2016. Of the original GATT members, Syria and the SFR Yugoslavia have not rejoined the WTO. Since FR Yugoslavia, (renamed as Serbia and Montenegro and with membership negotiations later split in two), is title: Member states of the World Trade Organization text: of December 2017, the WTO has 164 members. Of the 128 states party to the GATT at the end of 1994, all have since become WTO members except for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which had dissolved in 1992 and was suspended from participating in GATT at the time. Four other states, China, Lebanon, Liberia, Syria, were parties to GATT but subsequently withdrew from the treaty prior to the establishment of the WTO. China and Liberia have since acceded to the WTO. The remaining WTO members acceded after first becoming WTO observers and negotiating membership. The 28 states of title: World Trade Organization text: Once the general council or ministerial conference approves of the terms of accession, the applicant's parliament must ratify the Protocol of Accession before it can become a member. Some countries may have faced tougher and a much longer accession process due to challenges during negotiations with other WTO members, such as Vietnam, whose negotiations took more than 11 years before it became official member in January 2007. The WTO has 164 members and 23 observer governments. Liberia became the 163rd member on 14 July 2016, and Afghanistan became the 164th member on 29 July 2016. In addition to states, the title: Cross-national cooperation and agreements text: with those mentioned above. The WTO is one of the most effective trade agreements among nations. The WTO replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1995 and has 125 member nations.currently 153 member are part of WTO. Many believe GATT initiated rampant liberalization in trade in 1947 and its move contributed to the expansion of trade all over the world by eliminating tariff and quotas. Moreover, WTO continued GATT's principle with more multilateral forum, which enables governments to settle agreements or to dispute them regarding trade. Rapid growth of trade among nations has forced the agreement to title: Member states of the World Trade Organization text: is an observer state and begun negotiations in 1996. The following table lists all current members, their accession date and previous GATT membership. The following table lists all 23 WTO observers. Within five years of being granted observer status by the WTO, states are required to begin negotiating their accession to the organization. The following table lists all the UN member states and UN observer states which are neither members nor observers of the WTO. Member states of the World Trade Organization The original member states of the World Trade Organization are the parties to the GATT after ratifying the