Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 8 • Number 42 • 8th December 2004

WTO Services Talks Said To Be In ‘Crisis’; Chair Remains Hopeful


A senior WTO official has described the Doha round services negotiations as in "crisis" due to lack of engagement by a large number of countries. His comments came as the recent two-week ‘cluster’ of talks on the further liberalisation of trade in services ended on 3 December with a meeting of the Special Session of the Council for Trade in Services (CTS), which oversees the services talks.

Mamdouh: services negotiations "in trouble"

Abdel-Hamid Mamdouh, the head of the WTO Secretariat’s services division, told the press on 3 December that "the negotiations are not progressing," pointing to the "huge number" of countries that have not yet made initial offers of market access in the ongoing talks.

The Doha mandate gave Members until March 2003 to submit their initial offers; the July Package said that revised offers should be made by May 2005. To date, 37 non-least-developed country (LDC) Members — including Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa, Morocco, and Venezuela — have yet to table offers. LDCs are not expected to make offers. Market access in services is negotiated bilaterally through a process of requests and offers. The initial requests and offers serve as the baseline for the bilateral talks.

Malaysia made its initial offers on 3 December; Egypt announced at the CTS meeting that it would do so the following week, which would bring the number of countries that have submitted initial offers in the negotiations up to 47 out of the 148 WTO Members.

Mr. Mamdouh echoed Members’ disappointment with the depth and quality of the offers made thus far, saying, "it’s safe to say services have not been getting the appropriate attention in capitals."

Quad, others, call for more and better offers

Sources indicated that there was general agreement at the CTS meeting that the services talks are at a critical juncture. A 23 November informal ‘organisational statement’ from a group of countries including the Quad (Canada, the US, the EC, and Japan), India, Chile, and Mexico was the subject of much discussion (see BRIDGES Weekly, 1 December 2004). The paper called on Members to "engage substantively in the request-offer process" with an eye to the May 2005 benchmark date. It also emphasised that further initial offers were "critical to securing high-quality, meaningful revised offers." Some Members disagreed with the communication’s exclusive focus on market access, emphasising that they wanted to discuss rule-making as well.

Chilean WTO Ambassador and CTS Chair Alejandro Jara expressed more optimism than Mr. Mamdouh, saying that more offers are expected in the near future, and that "there’s a lot of will and political capital invested in… [putting] the talks on an equal footing with those of agriculture and non-agricultural market access."

Mode 4 (’movement of natural persons’) was also discussed, though no papers on the subject were tabled. A group including India, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and the Philippines said they would present a paper on categories of businesspersons in a few months’ time.

Next services cluster set for February 2005

Members agreed at the CTS meeting to a three-week long cluster of services negotiations in February 2005; the unusually long talks will allow many bilateral meetings to take place. Subsequent clusters will take place in June and September.

Some countries warn that it is not feasible to wait for progress in agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA) talks before moving forward on services. They argue that services are a complex issue, and that because domestic coalitions of support for liberalisation cannot be built overnight, countries need to "start doing their homework right now."

ICTSD reporting; "WTO Official Sounds Alarm on Progress of Services Talks," WTO REPORTER, 6 December 2004.