The Challenges Ahead

6.4 Assessment of Trade in Services

Article XIX:3 provides that prior to establishing the negotiating guidelines for a new round, “the Council for Trade in Services shall carry out an assessment of trade in services in overall terms and on a sectoral basis with reference to the objectives of this Agreement, including those set out in paragraph 1 of Article IV.” While discussed at virtually all Meetings of the Services Council since 1998/99, delegations have found it difficult to arrive at a common assessment. This may be due not only to natural divergences in policy objectives and negotiating interest, but also to problems of data availability and comparability across countries, sectors and modes. The commitments contained in schedules can hardly be considered to be meaningful reference points for an assessment, given that they cover only a limited number of sectors and that most entries remained confined to locking in status quo conditions in the early 1990s. In many cases, they have since been overtaken by autonomous policy reforms.

At the request of the Council for Trade in Services, the WTO Secretariat prepared numerous background papers in 1998 and 1999, mostly available on the WTO Website, with potentially relevant information. A Secretariat Note of late 2001 (document S/CSS/W/117, (8 pages, 74KB)) discusses conceivable criteria for Members’ own assessment of services performance. Ideally, deliberations in the Services Council would be based on such national assessments. To further advance the process, the Council for Trade in Services held a Symposium on Assessment of Trade in Services in early 2002; it offered academic researchers and representatives of national and international institutions a forum to present and discuss relevant findings. Most presentations are available on the WTO Website.