The twentieth session of the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was held at Geneva from October 23 to November 16, 1962. The Contracting Parties decided to convene a ministerial meeting in the early part of 1963 to consider a program for effective liberalization and expansion of trade in both primary and secondary products. In this connection, full weight would be attached to the importance and urgency of negotiating solutions to the problems of trade in primary products and to the additional trade problems of less developed countries. The proposal that such a meeting should be held was made jointly by the governments of the United States and Canada.