Bruxelles, 28/06/2006 (Agence Europe) - Meeting members of the European Services Forum (ESF), an association which defends the interests of European actors within the sector, in Brussels on Tuesday, Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson reaffirmed his commitment to obtain an ambitious agreement on trade in services. "By focusing on agriculture and manufactured goods, the negotiations have come in too low on the agenda of the Doha Round for talks on services", he said in a press release, going on to state that he and some 20 ministers would draw up an inventory of discussions on this plank at the ministerial meeting of Geneva to be held from 29 June to 2 July (see other article, page 10). Stressing the importance of its investments in the growth of the developing countries, and taking as its basis studies showing the gains for world growth resulting from an increase of the trade in services (130 billion dollars for the liberalisation of the trade in services, as opposed to 50 billion for agriculture and 80 billion for manufactured goods, according to the Australian Productivity Commission), the Union is pushing, amongst other things, for an improvement in trade in services in the fields of road, maritime and air transport, energy services, ICT, telecommunications and postal services, banking, financial and insurance services, engineering and architecture. The member countries of the WTO involved, developed and developing countries alike, launched multilateral negotiations on services on 28 February: these will allow groups of members to present their requests to other groups on the various sectors under the heading of services (EUROPE 9242). According to the timetable agreed on at the ministerial meeting of Hong Kong last December, the revised offers on services must be on the table before the end of July.