Developing nations should prepare for services talks

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

While the hottest talks at the recent World Trade Organization ministerial meeting were on agricultural, it is actually the opening up of more non-agricultural and services sectors that developing countries must prepare themselves for, activists say.

Aside from agreeing on a deadline for cutting market- distorting agricultural subsidies, trade ministries in Hong Kong also agreed on a set of deadlines for the opening up of the services sector and other non-agricultural sectors.

"The adoption of this approach could be potentially devastating for the industrial development prospects of developing countries," Chee Yoke Ling, spokesperson for non- governmental organization Third World Network (TWN), said last week.

Meanwhile, on the services proposal, developed countries will intensify their pressure on developing countries to liberalize their services sectors, Chee said.

Group members have agreed that, in addition to the current bilateral negotiations, the request-offer negotiations on services could be pursued on a plurilateral basis. Based on such an approach, a group of countries can request another country to open talks on providing market access to its services sector.

The Hong Kong meeting also agreed that groups of members presenting plurilateral requests to other members should submit such requests by Feb. 28, 2006.

A second round of revised offers shall be submitted by July 31, 2006 while final draft schedules of commitments shall be submitted by Oct. 31, 2006.

"Developing and poor countries, including Indonesia, must understand that the special and differential treatment they get in agricultural is their right," said Ludfia Hanim from non- governmental organization Institute for Global Justice.

"This should not be traded away by recklessly opening up other sectors," she added.

Indonesian WTO negotiator Delima Azahari said earlier that her team had clearly stated that the agricultural deals were stand- alone and would not be traded away for improved market access in the non-agricultural and services sectors.

Ludfia said that the new set of deadlines and new approaches to the talks on the services sector should alert Indonesia and other developing countries.

"Indonesia needs to assess which services it is going to open up and how wide," she said, suggesting the sectors related to public welfare like education and health should not be fully liberalized.

Ludfia said that as to date no assessments had been conducted to serve as a basis for the country to start talks on the services sector.