Brussels, 19/10/2009 (Agence Europe) - Joining forces under the banner of the Global Services Coalition, the European Services Forum, the US Coalition of Service Industries and the services industry associations of Australia, Barbados, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan called, at the World Services Summit in Washington on 13-14 October (see EUROPE 9998), for the governments of WTO member countries to maintain the impetus given by the G20 on speeding up the progress of Doha negotiations at the WTO, especially in relation to the chapter on services. “In services, this will require rapid delivery of additional and improved market access offers as well as capturing all the offers signalled at the Services Signalling Conference last July. Many of the tasks ahead on services will be ongoing beyond the successful conclusion of the Doha round. We therefore call on our governments to commit themselves to work closely with us to explore creative new approaches, including building a critical mass of support for a new generation of services negotiations which combine regulatory reform as well as trade and investment liberalisation,” says the Global Services Coalition statement, noting that services constitute two thirds of the world's economy, that services are core drivers of economic growth and job creation and that they are the fastest growing component of world trade. The services sector, the Coalition says, is the most heavily protected sector globally, “burdened with the highest degrees of entrenched government intervention”.
“I understand that many of you would be frustrated by the slow pace of the Doha round and by the fact that the fate of services negotiations is linked to other areas under negotiation. But it would be disingenuous to believe that services liberalisation would be easier outside the Doha round,” said WTO Director General Pascal Lamy, well aware that the deadlock in talks since July 2008 and, in the words of US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, the almost obsessive focus in negotiations on the agriculture and manufactured goods (NAMA) chapters, had led American service companies to consider fresh initiatives to stimulate global services trade. On Wednesday, former US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky outlined a number of options, including the negotiation of a services-only free trade agreement between the United States, Japan and the EU, and sectoral agreements on services (similar to those on NAMA), such as one covering the e-services sector (services offered on the internet), among countries which would form a critical production mass at world level and would agree to liberalise trade in the sector while remaining open to other countries that wanted to join later. Lamy argued, however, that it would be harder to persuade the large emerging countries, Brazil and China especially, to further open up their financial and environmental services markets outside broader talks, such as the Doha Round, in which they could, in return for concessions on services, make bigger gains in agriculture and manufacturing industry. (E.H./transl.rt)