MC13: Talks on new issues yield five outcomes

Abu Dhabi: Amid pressure on developing countries to yield to the demands of richer nations to accept new issues such as environment, labour and gender to make the United Arab emirates -chaired World Trade Orgnaisation MC13 a success, New Delhi Tuesday said that already at least five such outcomes were in place such as new disciplines on services domestic regulation that are expected to lower trade costs by over $125 billion globally.

India would benefit from a move of over 70 nations like UK, UAE and Australia who have agreed to take on additional obligations in the services sector under the Services Domestic Regulations pact. Members such as Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Japan, Korea,New Zealand, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Switzerland, UAE, UK and US are taking these additional obligations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to ease non-goods trade among themselves and extend the similar concessions to all other members of the WTO.

These obligations under their schedules in GATS seek to mitigate the unintended trade restrictive effects of measures relating to licensing requirements and procedures, qualification requirements and procedures, and technical standards among themselves, the official added.


The disciplines will be applied on a "most-favoured nation" principle, meaning that they will benefit all WTO members.

It will also benefit Indian professional companies who will now have equal opportunity to access markets in these 70 countries if they meet the standards, said an official. Accession and graduation of least developed countries' are another outcomes.