BEIJING, April 25: China will offer to further liberalize its services sector next month as part of this year’s Doha round of trade negotiations, a visiting US service industry delegation said on Monday. US Coalition of Service Industries (CSI) chairman Norman Sorensen said after meeting officials in Beijing that China’s Ministry of Finance and Commerce is “working very, very hard” to put more on the table in terms of service sector reform.

“We believe that China is prepared to make a meaningful, revised services offer to the World Trade Organization (WTO) by May 31 — the first deadline — aiming at the final conclusion of the Doha round of trade talks culminating in December in Hong Kong,” Sorensen said.

The 2001 Doha declaration committed WTO members to negotiating reductions in barriers to agricultural and services trade.

As part of those negotiations, the United States and the European Union have promised to address farming production, export subsidies and/or market access barriers in return for opportunities abroad for their competitive service industries.

“We cannot support an agreement that does not contain both,” Sorensen said.

He said China was one of about 50 countries to submit a first round offer but did little more than restate the commitments it made as a condition of WTO accession.

At the same time, China could reduce the political pressure it faces due to its massive trade surplus with the United States if it liberalizes its services sector, Sorensen pointed out.

“The imbalance is in manufacturing and in agriculture and in textiles and that imbalance can be addressed easily by opening up the services sector to American companies more widely,” he said.

Sorensen said that his coalition wanted to see China reduce its capital requirements and ownership restrictions on foreign firms, and accelerate the opening up of its financial markets.

He noted, however, that China had made it “very clear” that the United States and other countries must also improve their negotiating offers if it is to up the ante in service sector reform.

Eighty per cent of the US workforce is employed in the services sector, compared to about a third in China, according to the CSI.

While China’s service exports are on the rise, the services trade balance is still strongly in the US’ favour.—AFP