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An issue paper prepared by India has been accepted as the basis for the ongoing negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Services. Seeking a fresh momentum to the WTO negotiations on services, which had not made much progress so far, Shri Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, tabled the paper by India at a meeting of the Ministerial Core Group on Services, which was jointly co-chaired by him and Mr. Robert Portman, the US Trade Representative (USTR) in Geneva on Wednesday. India’s paper aims to provide a structure and focus on the various issues on which decisions would be required at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference of the WTO in December in order to achieve a balanced and meaningful package on Services at the end of the current Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. India has a special interest in Services in view of its strengths in this sector and in fact, the Core Ministerial Group on Services was recently constituted as a result of the initiative taken by Shri Kamal Nath.
The Core Group meeting held on 12th October in Geneva was attended by Ministers and Senior Officials of 15 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, EC, Egypt, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore and the US) to consider concrete ways of imparting specificity and momentum to the services negotiations.
The paper received broad support in the Core Group as a basis for moving forward and as clearly outlining all the relevant issues. Particularly, members agreed on the following basic principles which would guide further work in negotiating the guidelines and procedures on services:
n Any complementary approach must supplement and not replace the existing request-offer approach which in fact needs to be intensified simultaneously.
n Such approach must preserve the basic architecture of GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) and the flexibility it provides particularly for developing country members, including the levels of development of individual members.
n While all members should participate, any targets that may be agreed would not be applicable to LDCs.
n The focus of any such approach should be improvements from the existing commitments. The special situation of newly acceded countries who have taken extensive commitments at the time of their accession to the WTO would be taken into account.
The paper emphasised the need to improve the quality as well as coverage of commitments in Services. The paper also identified the issue of possible numerical targets that needed discussion. There was recognition in the paper and in the discussions that followed that the Services package would have to include domestic regulations and that clear direction was needed at the Hong Kong Ministerial for developing a sound basis for legal disciplines at the end.
It was decided that the issue paper tabled by India would be shared with the whole membership of the WTO for both transparency and to facilitate moving ahead in this important area of negotiations. The Ministers also directed the Core Group to work on the basis of this paper with a view to attaining common ground on the issues identified.
SB/MRS
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