Services Negotiations
In services negotiations have been going on in the areas of Market Access and Rules. For getting meaningful commitments for businesses to access trading partners markets Members engaged in the bilateral request offer process and tabled their initial and in many cases revised offers on the basis of trading partner’s requests during 2003-06. Pakistan tabled its initial offer on 24 th May 2005. The break in negotiations in July 2006 led to the deadline of 31 st July 2006 agreed upon in Hong Kong for tabling revised or the re-revised offers passing unfulfilled.
Earlier the bilateral request offer process found to be slow and not showing tangible results was supplemented with the plurilateral request offer method where Members sharing common interests in certain services sectors sent joint requests to another group of Members in whose markets they were interested. Two such rounds were held which were generally thought to have been helpful in involving Capital officials in the process and in apprising requested and requesting members of each others positions.
The soft resumption of negotiations in November 2006 led to some informal exchanges between Members which culminated in the acknowledgement that services negotiations would only take off after some tangible breakthrough is made in Agriculture and NAMA negotiations. Till then Members have encouraged each other to continue with preparing revised offers in Capitals. The full fledged resumption of negotiations is awaited and informal cluster of services meetings are planned in end of January-February 2007.
In rules the only area where progress has been made is Article 6.4, negotiations for disciplines in domestic regulations. Members seek disciplines which ensure transparency of regulations and a balance between regulatory autonomy and needlessly excessive regulations that may nullify the market access recorded in Members schedules. Members feel that, qualification requirements and procedures, licensing requirements and procedures and international standards should not be used as disguised protection.
Pakistan's objectives
Mode 4 of GATS TN/S/W/31