Over 70 WTO nations agree to take additional obligations in services sector

India would benefit from a move of over 70 nations like the UK, UAE and Australia that have agreed to take on additional obligations in the services sector under an agreement of the WTO, an official said on Tuesday.

These WTO (World Trade Organisation) members are taking the additional obligations under the General Agreement on Goods in Services (GATS) to ease non-goods trade among themselves and extend similar concessions to all other members of the WTO.

These obligations under their schedules in GATS seek to mitigate unintended trade restrictive effects or measures relating to licensing requirements and procedures, qualification requirements and procedures, and technical standards among themselves, the official added.

The disciplines will be applied on a "most-favoured nation" principle, meaning that they will benefit all WTO members.

It will also benefit Indian professional companies which will now have equal opportunity to access markets in these 70 countries, if they meet the standards, the official said.

As per estimates, the move will help reduce services trade costs by 10 per cent for lower-middle income economies and 14 per cent for upper-middle income economies, with overall savings of $ 127 billion.

Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, the UK and US are part of the initiative.

According to Ajay Srivastava, founder of think tank GTRI, the new agreement would be a plurilateral agreement where just 72 out of 164 WTO members are a party. India, South Africa and most WTO members have not signed this agreement.

He suggested the WTO to "focus on core issues like WTO reforms, reviving appellate body, and agriculture reforms", among others.

"This trend of integrating Joint Statement Initiatives (JSI) into WTO will weaken the WTO and pave the way for adopting many more such JSIs on investments, MSMEs, gender, and e-commerce in the next few meetings. Matters of interest to limited members may be negotiated outside of WTO," Srivastava said.