On 05 August 2013 the World Trade Organisation (WTO) announced that its first Director-General, Renato Ruggiero, who served from 1995 to 1999, had died in Milan, Italy at age 83. According to the WTO, in the late 1990s he played an important role in brokering three important WTO agreements covering information technology products, trade in telecommunications services and trade in financial services. He was also instrumental in guiding Ministers through the First WTO Ministerial Conference in Singapore in 1996. In Singapore, the WTO deepened its activities devoted to the least-developed countries and commenced its work on trade facilitation, which is today among the most important issues on the WTO’s negotiating agenda. In 1998 he oversaw the commemoration in Geneva of the 50th anniversary of the multilateral trading system which included the participation at the 2nd Ministerial Conference of many heads of state and government, including South African President Nelson Mandela. Mr Ruggiero was the first Director-General to call for elimination of all quotas and duties on exports from the world's poorest countries.
