At WTO, negotiations stay muted on services

ABU DHABI: Trade in services such as movement of skilled professionals accounts for over 20 per cent of the global commerce but the sector is still not getting sufficient attention in the negotiations of the WTO, according to experts and officials.

The experts also said that developed or rich member nations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are only interested in pushing their own non-trade agenda and not focusing on issues which really need special focus of the Geneva-based multi-lateral body.

Trade ministers and officials of the 166-member WTO are gathered here to discuss wide ranging issues such as agriculture, and fisheries subsidies. The 13th ministerial conference of the WTO on Wednesday entered the third day. MC is the highest decision making body of the global trade watchdog. “There are enough issues related to trade are there to discuss in the WTO like sanitary and phytosanitary issues, technical barriers to trade and mutual recognition agreements (MRAs), but the developed nations want to push new issues,” an international trade expert, who did not wish to be named, said. Sharing similar views, an official said that there are no discussions on services trade in terms of how this can be improved. “There are no talks on that. They are not talking about MRAs, about mobility issues, how the mobility issues will be tackled. They are not discussing the issues which are restrictive for the developing nations,” the official said. Another expert said issues like the movement of care-givers from emerging nations to rich nations needs attention as countries like India have demographic dividend for another 25 years and the EU has demographic deficit.