ISLAMABAD, Dec 8: Speakers at a seminar urged rich countries to allow GATS visa for both skilled and unskilled workers of developing countries to help them get some share in the services sector.

They also asked the industrialized countries to reciprocate the steps towards trade liberalization that poor members of the WTO had already undertaken. They were speaking at a panel on “WTO: Way to Hong Kong” organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) here on Thursday.

The participants also said that it was high time for the industrialized nations to comply with their commitments rather than putting more pressure on developing countries for further bindings.

The deputy secretary, ministry of commerce, Asad Hayauddin, said Pakistan strongly supported the GATS visa. However, Pakistan’s services sector was opened up to a high degree and benchmarking was not feared either.

The panel also stressed the importance of tariffs to encourage domestic industrial development. Discussing the double standards of industrialized countries in the area of services liberalization, the participants said that at the upcoming WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong, the rich nations, particularly the US, were expected to push for minimum commitments of other WTO members in opening up their services sectors, such as banking, telecommunications and transport.

“But they themselves are not ready to give access to service providers from developing countries in the negotiations of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS),” added the panellists.