The Chairperson drew the committee's attention to document G/MA/SPEC/18 which contained the draft periodic report of the Committee. This report, which would be finalized in the light of discussion today, would be submitted to the Council for Trade in Goods for examination at its meeting of 5 October 2001. The report contained in its Annex, a table summarizing factual information on the waivers under process submitted by the Members concerned; it concerned only the waivers related to the transposition of pre-Uruguay Round schedules into the Harmonized System which would expire on 31 October 2001; if the requests were approved, the waivers would be extended until 30 April 2002. These extensions concerned Nicaragua and Sri Lanka.

1.2 The requests and the draft decisions related to these extensions had been circulated in documents G/L/477, G/L/481, G/C/W/298 + Corr.1, G/C/W/299 and would be considered by the Council for Trade in Goods at its meeting of 5 October and then forwarded to the General Council for adoption.