37. The Chairperson recalled that, at the Council's meetings in February and May 1996, it had been agreed that developed country Members would annually update information on their technical cooperation activities relevant to the implementation of the TRIPS Agreement. Both in 1996 and 1997, this had been done in time for the Council's meeting in September. He suggested that also this year developed country Members update this information in time for the Council's meeting scheduled for 17 and 18 September. In addition, he suggested that the Council invite the intergovernmental organizations observers to the Council to provide information on their technical cooperation activities, as they had also done in previous years. The WTO Secretariat might similarly provide a note on its activities. This would enable the Council to focus also this year on technical cooperation at its meeting in September. In order to enable the timely processing and distribution to Members of this information, he suggested that the Members and intergovernmental organizations in question be invited to provide such written contributions by 1 September. He also drew attention to the fact that last year the Council had received information on technical cooperation activities from 16 developed country Members. There were still some developed country Members that had not yet provided any information on their technical cooperation activities. He underlined that it was important that each developed country Member provide information to the Council as agreed and urged in particular those Members that had not yet provided any information to make a special effort to supply the required information.
