Transcript Priorités de recherche et d`Analyse post-Hong Kong: le

Research and Analytical
Priorities post-Hong Kong:
Trade in Services
By:
Abdoulaye Ndiaye
Researcher
ILEAP-JEICP
[email protected]
Hong Kong Trade and Development Symposium
16 December 2005
Presentation Layout
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GATS negotiations: African issues and
concerns
Research areas
Importance of services for
West Africa
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In most West African countries,
services contribute between 25 and
60% of GDP and occupy on average
30% of the working population
– Contribution of the services sector in the
Nigerian economy: 25-30% (1985-1999)
– In Senegal services account for 60% of
GDP. Telecoms represent only 6% of GDP
in 2004.
African concerns in services
negotiations
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In the near-totality of services sectors, export
capacities remain limited; opportunities for
expansion exist but are not exploited
Limited access to updated and targeted
information
Large number of services sub-sectors
Difficulties in measuring the contribution of
services sectors to development
Need to evaluate the impact of services
liberalisation => need for countries to become
more proactive (in request and offer process)
Issues and Concerns…
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Need to reorganise statistics on services to make
them more relevant for GATS negotiations
E-commerce: Outsourcing => countries who
have engaged have no predictability (key
principle at the WTO) => developed countries
tend to raise barriers to outsourcing or ‘delocalisation’ of services jobs to maintain
employment in the sector => political or
economic justifications?
Difficulties in following negotiations in an
efficient and continuous manner (weakness of
negotiating teams in Geneva due to high costs
compared with countries’ economic capacities)
Research topics:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Define a common position on Mode 4
Identify market access constraints for African
countries
Gather GATS-related statistics (information system)
Remove barriers to E-commerce services
Develop capacities to formulate requests
Country support at the national and Geneva levels
Support to sub-regional integration bodies
Respond to the growing need for regulation of the
services sector
Topic 1: Define a common position on Mode 4
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Bring more transparency and
predicability to the visa process for
African professionals working in OECD
countries
Further develop the concept of a GATS
visa and link it to immigration and
security issues
Topic 2: Identify market access
constraints for African countries
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These constraints can be of a
regulatory nature or based on
discriminatory practices
Identification of these types of
constraints often requires complex and
costly benchmarking studies
Topic 3: Establishment of GATS-related
Statistics (information systems)
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Current statistics do not enable the
classification of services data
according to the 4 modes
Further, in many cases the data is old
or simply does not exist
Topic 4: Remove barriers to ECommerce Services
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E-commerce represents an opportunity for
African countries who are able to respond to
the global market
However there are limiting factors on Mode
4 (see Topic 1) and issues around
classification (currently on the 1991 CPC)
that do not necessarily take into account
new ICT services (Mode 1 vs. Mode 2)
Topic 5: Develop capacities to formulate
requests
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Formulation of requests requires identification of
obstacles encountered by African services suppliers
in target markets. This requires financial and
human resources that are often not available to
African countries
The results of such research serve to sensitise
African companies regarding what their
governments can seek or achieve on their behalf at
the WTO
Such ‘learning-by-doing’ would aim to have African
countries formulate requests through a
methodology constraint-identification, leading to
the development of real expertise in this area
Topic 6: Country support at the national and
Geneva levels
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At national level: ILEAP should continue its
work in this area by enabling researchers to
provide support on areas identified (or
proposed) by countries
At Geneva level: ILEAP could recruit, in a
timely and targeted way, researchers who
could analyse WTO data and subsequently
make their results available to Geneva and
capital-based trade officials
Topic 7: Support to sub-regional
integration bodies
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Undertake cross-cutting studies on
services, enabling countries to outline
common negotiating positions through
regional integration bodies
Support sub-regional integration
bodies to set up and provide data for a
services database
Topic 8: Regulation of the services
sector
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Progressive liberalisation of services will
lead to more intense competition => need
to regulate the market and protect the
consumer and small enterprises from
abuse of dominant players (i.e. in
telecommunications sector)
ILEAP should focus further on mechanisms
/ regulation for those services sectors that
currently lack such structures