April 11, 2006	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 12, 1427

GENEVA, April 10: Talks on liberalising global commerce in services as part of a wider treaty on breaking down trade barriers are finally picking up speed after years of sluggishness, a senior WTO official said on Monday.

“There is definitely a new momentum to the services negotiations,” said Hamid Mamdouh, the World Trade Organisation’s director of services.

“The requests are both focused and realistic,” he told journalists after a new series of negotiations among trade diplomats representing the WTO’s 149 member governments.

Mamdouh has in the past bemoaned the lack of pace in talks, part of the wider Doha Round negotiations that were launched in 2001 and aim by December to yield a treaty cutting tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to commerce.

The services talks, which cover areas including banking and transport, have had a lower profile than negotiations on trade in farm produce and industrial goods.

Critics had blamed the sluggish pace of the services talks on their special “bilateral request-offer” structure. WTO nations were meant to ask each other for market-opening moves in particular sectors and then come forward with initial offers. In a third stage revised offers that went further toward freeing up markets would be presented.

Members missed a string of deadlines under that system and the process remained mired.

At the WTO conference in Hong Kong last December, governments agreed on a new, “plurilateral” approach to the services talks that would enable groups of countries to negotiate with each other in an effort to speed things up.

Since then, around 20 joint requests for liberalisation have been filed, covering sectors including financial services, transport and tourism.

A hard core of around 40 countries is involved, and this “focus on the strategic negotiating partners” has enabled talks to advance — even if it is still too early to predict the outcome — said Mamdouh.

“The total of all that could be seen as the first approximation of what might constitute a critical mass of commitments which the proponents are looking for at the end of the day,” said Mamdouh.

“There was no off-hand rejection of anything. In some cases, recipient countries have given indications of where their red lines may be and where flexibilities might take place.”

According to sources close to the talks, there have been “ambitious” proposals covering what is known as “Mode Four” — cross-border movement of service providers.

India in particular has been pushing for its information technology workers to be able to do business freely in rich countries.

There also have been proposals in the retail and energy sectors, as well as efforts to abolish restrictions on foreign accountants or lawyers.—AFP