BackWTO mediator issues new proposals for services sector
WTO mediator issues new proposals for services sector
PremiumNew script: Fernando de Mateo y Venturini, Mexico’s WTO ambassador who has drafted the document on services. (Photo: AFP)
Geneva: AWorld Trade Organization, or WTO, mediator issued new proposals on Monday for opening up services such as telecommunications and banking as part of a global trade deal.
But the new text, replacing a previous document issued in February, did not set dates for revised offers or final commitments in the services negotiations.
“Members shared the view that substantial efforts were needed to reach a successful conclusion of the negotiations," Mateo said in his report, summarizing progress in the services talks in the WTO’s Doha Round over the past few months.
Reflecting the difficulties in reaching agreement, Mateo entitled his document a report with a draft annex, rather than a formal negotiating text, as three WTO members—Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela—argue that no formal services text is needed. Together with revised texts for Doha’s core chapters of agriculture and industrial goods, the new document serves as a blueprint for a possible meeting of ministers to reach an outline deal in the round, now in its seventh year.
In addition to talks on agriculture and industry, ministers would also hold a “signalling conference" to indicate their intentions in services.
That would allow, for example, a country that agrees to a big cut in farm tariffs to take comfort from a probable market opening in telecoms elsewhere.
Services account for 70% or more of most developed economies and 50% or more of many developing ones. But they make up only 19% of world trade.
Business organizations representing services are keen to prevent long-running rows on opening up agriculture and industrial goods from hampering ambitious plans to lower barriers to services.
While negotiations in farming and manufactured goods focus on cutting tariffs and subsidies, talks in services are about changing domestic regulations to let in foreign competitors.
Mateo’s latest report—to be reviewed by WTO members on 2 June—does not list specific proposals for opening different sectors, but instead lays out the framework for an agreement.
However, there is still disagreement on some fundamentals. Developed countries want the opening in services—the sector of most interest to some rich countries—to be at least as ambitious as those in agriculture and industrial goods.
They want developing countries to lock in current levels of market opening and agree to further liberalization.
Developing countries do not accept that, and say that any further opening in services must be in areas of interest to them—including liberalization of the movement of temporary workers, a core demand.
Only about 30 countries are taking part actively in the services talks, both in bilateral pairs and bigger groups, but any liberalization they agree is open to all 152 WTO members.
The US, European Union and other rich countries are calling on major developing nations such as Brazil, China and India to open up banking and other professional services.
In return, developing countries want rich nations to let in more temporary workers in areas from construction and health—a demand that has run up against national security concerns and anti-immigration sentiment in developed states.
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