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July 23, 2004 Global
Services Coalition Urges Equal Treatment for Services in Oshima
Text. A global coalition of services organizations wrote to WTO
Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi on July 20, urging that services
be given treatment equal to that of agriculture and goods in the text.
The draft statement, released last week, addressed services in a
section along with other issues such as TRIPS, Dispute Settlement,
Rules, and other issues. (see GSN update of July 16, 2004). The joint
coalition letter is copied below.
WTO Informal
Heads of Delegation Meeting, July 19-20. WTO members broadly
welcomed the first draft of a package of “framework” agreements when
they met on 19–20 July, although they had reservations - sometimes
serious - about some parts of the text, according to a summary of the
meeting distributed by the WTO. General Council chairman Shotaro Oshima
warned that agreement would have to be reached by the “drop-dead”
deadline of Friday, July 30. For a summary of the meeting, click here:
http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news04_e/dda_package_sum
_19_20july04_e.htm.
July 20, 2004
Dear Dr. Supachai:
We are writing
to express our hope that, in any text resulting from the General
Council meeting at the end of the month, services be given treatment
equal to agriculture and goods.
As you know, such treatment is consistent with the treatment of
services in the draft Seattle declaration, the Doha Declaration, and in
the Derbez text.
What this means in practice is that the second paragraph in Section 1e
of the draft General Council Decision would become a new Section 1d.
We believe it is important to maintain this equality of treatment in
order to underscore that a successful negotiation in services could be
one of the hallmark achievements of the DDA, to keep a sharp focus on
the need to get more and better offers, and then to work hard in
bilateral negotiations to improve offers. This will be a long and
difficult process and it should begin, with energy, as soon as possible
early this fall.
We hope you will do all you can to raise the level of attention given
to services. Obtaining equal treatment with agriculture and goods in
the new General Council text would help do so.
Sincerely,
Australian Services Roundtable
OTHER ITEMS:
"Significance
of Efficient Financial Services for the Future of Japan's Economy."
Speech given by Toshihiko Fukui, Governor of the Bank of Japan, to the
Japan Center for Economic Research in Tokyo on July 22, 2004. Click
here: http://www.boj.or
.jp/en/press/04/ko0407c_f.htm
Recent Trends
in US Services Trade. Annual report on US trade in services,
prepared by the US International Trade Commission (USITC). The report
analyzes significant trends in services trade as a whole, assesses
trade and trade-related issues in selected service industries, and
identifies major US trading partners. Data are presented for
cross-border transactions, sales through affiliates, and direct
investment. The report is available at: ftp://ftp.us
itc.gov/pub/reports/studies/PUB3703.PDF.
Studies on
Welfare Gains in US Free Trade Agreements. A series of
computational analyses prepared by Drusilla Brown, Kiyota Kozo, and
Robert M. Stern at the University of Michigan between May and July of
this year. The studies cover US free trade agreements with the
Southern African Customs Union (SACU), Central America, Australia, and
Morocco, as well as in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). To
download the studies, click the links below.
SACU: http://www.FordSchool.umich.edu/rsie/workingpapers/Papers501-
525/r509.pdf. |