Cambodia’s Preparation for WTO Membership: Issues, Challenges, and Where to Go from Here by Charles Santiago Consultant on Globalization and International Trade based in Kuala Lumpur. 1. Introduction The World Trade Organization’s rules based multilateral trading agreements coupled with changes in technology wedded to evolving multinational corporation’s international production, strategies and concentration – are fundamentally reshaping the nature of the trade, investment and business environment as we know it. The new trade and business environment requires the transformation of the domestic economic, legal and institutional framework. At the heart of this phenomenon is the embracing of a free market centered rules based trading system which involves a greater role of the market vis-à-vis the State and a greater integration into the world economy. It is suggested that the free market promotes productive and distributive efficiency and is the best allocator of scarce resources. In this view the market stimulates economic growth and ensures prosperity for all. The economist and philosopher Adam Smith tells us that the free market is a self-regulating system where individual actions are directed and coordinated, as though by an invisible hand, to maximize economic welfare. 29