December 04, 2007	Tuesday	Ziqa'ad 23, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Dec 3: The government should establish an independent task force to prepare the country’s position for making commitments to liberalise various sectors for foreign services providers under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) regime.

The suggestion came at the conclusion of a seminar on ‘Domestic Preparedness under General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)’ here on Monday. It was organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).

It was recommended that the proposed task force should be supervised by a senior advisory group having representatives from regulatory bodies, ministries, civil society and policy makers, while preparing the Pakistan’s position by the ministry of commerce and WTO-Geneva based Pakistani mission in the multilateral trade negotiation.

Ms Mehnaz Ajmal, a researcher from the SDPI, points out that GATS allows member countries to enforce regulations that meets the national policy objectives and effective regulatory regimes are crucial for trade liberalisation.

She said liberalisation commitments were benchmarked with domestic preparedness, and steps were taken to ensure that domestic regulatory reforms were dynamic and were in line with the multilateral commitments.

She also deliberated upon the research findings of 20 different regulatory bodies under services sector including Pakistan Engineering Council, Pakistan Council of Architect and Town Planner, etc. Suliman Shah spoke about the problems related to disaggregate data on import and exports in the services sector and pointed out that most of the sources under services sector did not provide the accurate data to the concerned government institutes.

He stressed that there was a need to improve the statistical coverage of services sector with disaggregated data to make clear to policymakers the value and scope of this sector.

Former Additional Secretary Commerce Naseem Qureshi said that consultations with the stakeholders on Pakistan’s negotiation position should be broad based and it should be carried out by ministry of commerce where transparency should be ensured.

A deputy secretary in WTO Wing of Commerce Ministry Manzoor Kayani informed the participants that the services sector contributed about 53.3 per cent to GDP and said that the country had consistently been following a policy of theorizing its trade and investment regimes.