India set to push for liberalisation of services trade at WTO Geneva talks

By Kritika Suneja

NEW DELHI: Reinstating its stand of continuing with the Doha Development Agenda, India will push for liberalising services trade at the World Trade Organization talks in Geneva.

Though services negotiations are part of the Doha Round under the General Agreement on Trade in Services, not much has happened in these negotiations since 2011. Besides, 23 countries of the WTO are separately negotiating the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), which aims at opening up markets and improving rules in areas such as licensing, financial services, telecom, ecommerce, maritime transport and professionals moving abroad temporarily to provide services. Many of these areas lie outside the WTO's ambit. India wants these to be brought back into the trade body’s mandate.
“We would also like to see greater issues looking at liberalisation of services and facilitation for those such as Mode 4 services. Apart from Mode 4, we would also like to see market access being discussed in the WTO because that has gone into TISA discussions,” said a commerce department official. Mode 4 refers to the movement of natural persons.

Of the four pillars of services negotiations—market access, domestic regulation, emergency safeguard measures and special treatment for least developed countries—only the last has been discussed at length at WTO.

“An outcome on services will balance the round for India because that is an area of strength for us and we have accepted many WTO decisions, which mostly favour the developed countries,” said an expert privy to the development. India wants to push for the Doha Round because the declaration of the recently concluded ministerial in Nairobi clearly stated a crack in the member countries’ intent to reaffirm it, much to India’s disappointment.

The Doha Round was launched in 2001 to open up markets in agriculture and industrial goods and services but has not delivered as per the expectations, making developed countries push for expansion of the WTO mandate by including newer issues.

While India has vehemently opposed the inclusion of new issues in the WTO mandate, the Nairobi declaration has made an opening for these subjects to the consensus of all members. Experts fear that issues such as investment and government procurement, which developed countries have been trying to push for quite some time, maybe the first ones to be hurled at the developing countries.

“Investment and government procurement are the two immediate targets, which we have always opposed. Developed countries want the exception given to developing countries in government procurement withdrawn.

The exception allows a country to favour its domestic suppliers for government procurement,” said an expert.

“If they bring in new issues and ours are not supported then we will have to block other issues,” the commerce department official said.