GATS TRAINING MODULE: ANNEX I

Understanding Your Country’s Services Trade

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I.1 The Importance of Services for Consumers and Producers, Traders and Investors

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Services are an important input for virtually all commercial activities, including other services, and a core determinant of the quality of life. No economy or social community could prosper without adequate transportation, communication, education or health services.

Developed and developing economies have built competitive service industries — the most visible in developing countries include tourism, construction, and transport — and benefit from the efficiency effects of a modern service infrastructure. Services exports may constitute an important foreign currency earner and contribute to overall economic expansion. The attendant employment effects could help to stem migration from less developed regions and provide a nucleus for self-sustained growth.

The quality of available business services may prove crucial to development. Research in the 1980s by UNCTAD in Latin America indicated that one of the primary distinctions between developed and developing economies was the availability of highly specialized business services. More recent research in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East has confirmed the importance of business services of international quality that are customised to local commercial needs. By tapping into regional or global markets, local service firms are able to support the development of specialized expertise.

To ensure compliance with prevailing quality standards and social preferences, governments around the world have issued services-related regulations, including licensing and certification requirements or universal access obligations for essential supplies.

  


Food for Thought:

  1. Name services sectors that contribute directly to the competitiveness of your country’s goods producers
     
  2. Name sectors whose quality and cost-effectiveness is of particular interest to potential investors.
     

Possible reply:

  1. Infrastructural services that provide direct inputs such as telecommunications, transport, energy, banking, insurance, distribution,
    Business services such as accountancy, management consulting, and legal services.
    Services that enhance quality and efficiency of the workforce (e.g. education and health).
     
  2. All of the above, with particular emphasis on infrastructral services.

 

 

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