Global Services Network Alert
September 24, 2005

Services Core Group to be Formed
Brazil, the EU, India, and the United States have agreed to support the establishment of a core group of countries on services trade, according to press reports. Meeting in Paris on September 23, the four agreed to push for the creation the group to advance negotiations on services in the Doha Round.

Lamy Urges WTO Members to Improve Services Offers
In a speech at the International Parliamentary Union in Geneva on September 22, 2005, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said that the quality of services offers that are currently on the table remains poor, and that he intends to urge WTO members to aim higher. "Trade in services is not only important because of the value of the actual services being exchanged, but because the existence of efficient and competitive services in a country is the indispensable foundation for absolutely any form of trade," he said. For a copy of his speech, click here.

US Trade Representative Says Services Take Equal Priority with Ag & NAMA
In a speech to the Coalition of Service Industries on September 20, 2005, United States Trade Representative Robert Portman said that the US cannot accept a final Doha Round package that does not include a meaningful services element. He said that, for the US, services take equal priority with agriculture and NAMA, and he discussed a work plan for services covering market access, domestic regulations, rules, and development. For a transcript of the remarks, click here.

Committee on Trade in Financial Services Report
On September 20, the Committee on Trade in Financial Services issued its annual report, which summarizes the various issues the Committee has addressed over the past year. These include the acceptance of the Fifth Protocol to the GATS, technical issues, recent developments in financial services trade, a transitional review of China's implementation of its WTO commitments, and a joint statement by a group of Members on financial services liberalization. For a copy of the report, click here.

Paper Calls for GATS Focus on Non-Discrimination, Regulatory Assistance, and Mode 4 Transparency
In order to spur the WTO services negotiations forward and to break free of the request-offer process that has yielded minimal results in terms of the quality of offers, WTO members need to identify a set of common goals to give direction and momentum to the negotiations, according to a recent paper by Aaditya Mattoo, a leading GATS expert. The paper, entitled "Services in a Development Round: Three Goals and Three Proposals," argues that WTO members should should set three broad goals: (1) locking in the currently open regimes for cross-border trade in a wide range of goods; (2) eliminating barriers to foreign investment in sectors where there is no good reason to defer liberalization; and,(3) allowing greater freedom of temporary movement for individual service providers (mode 4) as intra corporate transferres and to fulfill specific services contracts.

In order to respond to regulators' concerns about liberalizing services trade, the paper recommends that WTO members: (1) make non-discrimination, rather than market access, the focus of GATS commitments; (2) establish credible mechanisms for regulatory assistance; and (3) Allow mode 4 commitments to be transparently and predictably conditional on fulfillment of specific conditions by source countries. For a copy of the paper, click here.