Jan 26, 1985

WORK ON SERVICES WILL BE "EXTREMELY SLOW".

GENEVA, JANUARY 25 (IFDA/CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN)— "The future work on services will be extremely slow, and no one is prepared to charge ahead" a GATT spokesman said Thursday, about the outcome of the first formal meeting in GATT over the services question.-

Some fifty countries are reported to have attended the meeting for exchange of information on national studies related to services.-

"The fact of the meeting is more important than the substance", the GATT spokesman suggested.-

The 1982 GATT Ministerial meeting had agreed that interested countries could prepare national studies on services, and exchange information on these studies, inter alia through international organisations such as GATT.-

U.S. efforts to use this to push GATT into preparatory work for negotiations on trade in services had been blocked by the Third World countries, challenging the GATT jurisdiction or role for secretariat.-

As a result, though some eight studies had been prepared, no formal meetings even to exchange information could be organised by the secretariat, and only informal meetings for this purpose were field on the GATT premises.-

While the issue of jurisdiction is still to be resolved, Third World countries agreed, at the annual meeting of the Contracting Parties in November 1984, to a compromise under which the chairman of the GATT Contracting Parties was authorised to organise formal meetings of interested Contracting Parties to exchange information on national studies.-

The first such meeting - which the spokesman stressed, was "only a meeting, and not any committee or working party" - was held Thursday.-

Though the annual GATT meeting of CPs had also taken a number of decisions on more important issues, interestingly the formal meeting on services was the first that was very promptly scheduled by the GATT secretariat, which also made sure to publicise it through a press briefing.-

At Thursday's meeting, five national studies - those of Denmark, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Norway and Switzerland – were examined, and a number of questions asked, and clarifications obtained, on the trade balances and how they were arrived at, national regulations and obstacles to trade.-

It as agreed that at future meetings, the eight other studies (discussed informally last year), should also be examined. These relate to studies by U.S., U.K., Canada, Finland, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, and the European Community Commission.-

While there was an effort by the U.S. and a few others, a dialogue on the next stage of the process in GATT, there was considerable opposition to this, according to some of the Third World participants.-

A GATT spokesman merely said that "some views" were expressed on the extent to which the studies be drawn together into an overall picture at a more general level.-

The chairman of the meeting Felipe Jaramillo of Colombia, would appear to have suggested that at future meetings they could look into some areas like the general scope of services at the level of the world economy and in individual countries, statistical problems, the basic motivations underlying national regulations affecting trade in services, and ultimately at the problems of international trade in services.-

The GATT spokesman said that the majority of the delegations wanted only a "very tentative" approach to this work, and "no one is prepared to charge ahead".-

The future work will be "extremely slow, and very tentative indeed", the spokesman said, and indicated that the next meeting could be scheduled sometime in February.-

However, Third World participants said that efforts in this direction to force the pace, primarily at the instance of the U.S. and Japan, were not successful and there was resistance not only from Third World countries, but even others like Australia.-

A tentative date in February suggested by the chairman was not found acceptable, and it was agreed only that the next meeting should be held after consultations.-

Australia said it was entirely in agreement with the view that this issue of services should be looked into "at a more leisurely way", Third World participants said.-

"There are problems of far greater importance to international trade, and to most of GATT CPs, that have not been touched - not for weeks or months, but for 30 years".-

"If we can live with it, we can live with a more leisurely pace in services, which are important to some, but not to the majority", the Australian delegate is reported to have added.-