GENEVA, July 4: Talks on liberalising global commerce in services as part of a wider treaty have picked up pace, but progress is still too slow, a senior World Trade rganization official said on Monday. “There is good news and bad news,” said Hamid Mamdouh, WTO’s director of services. “The good news is that the numbers have changed. We’re in better shape.”
“But there is a general feeling among members that there’s still a lot to be desired.”
The services discussions, covering areas including banking and insurance, are part of the Doha Round of trade negotiations, which the WTO’s 148 members are struggling to complete after four years of stumbling talks.
Members are aiming to cap the round at a ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December.
Talks on farm trade — seen as the key to a successful round — have made the most progress so far, but negotiators have expressed repeated concern about the slow pace of discussions on industrial goods and services.
WTO members were supposed to have submitted initial liberalization offers two years ago and to lodge revised offers — going further towards freeing up their markets — by the end of May.
So far, a total 92 members have filed initial offers, but only 47 have submitted revised offers, chiefly rich nations but also including big developing country players such as Brazil.
Key developing countries such as India and China have yet to make a revised offer.
Twenty-four developing countries have yet to make even an initial offer.
Some developing nations have been wary of making concessions on services until they are clear what benefits they will get in the farm trade and industrial goods.
The remaining WTO members, among the world’s poorest countries, are not required to submit offers, although Senegal has done so.
Overall, Mamdouh said, the situation now was a marked improvement on that in place for the past two years.
In the period between March 2003 and May this year, 52 members submitted initial and revised offers. Since May, 40 have come forward.
“That gives an indication that the pace is picking up,” Mamdouh told reporters. “But whether the pace is now the one we need is a different question.”
“I wouldn’t say we’re in crisis, but we haven’t got out of the troubled area.”—AFP
