176. The Chairman recalled that paragraph 34 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration, dealing with electronic commerce, instructed the General Council to consider the most appropriate institutional arrangements for handling the Work Programme, and to report on further progress to the Fifth Session of the Ministerial Conference. Pursuant to this, the General Council had agreed at its meeting in October 2002 to maintain the current institutional arrangements for handling the Work Programme on Electronic Commerce, namely that the Councils for Trade in Services, Trade in Goods and TRIPS, and the Committee on Trade and Development would examine and report on aspects of electronic commerce relevant to their respective areas of competence. He also recalled that, at the TRIPS Council's meeting in March 2002, the Secretariat had been requested to update its factual background note on intellectual property and electronic commerce circulated in document IP/C/W/128 in February 1999. This update had now been circulated as Addendum 1 to the aforementioned document.
