UNCTAD’s Commission on Trade in Goods and Services, and Commodities concluded its third session in Geneva today with agreement on an ambitious work programme, focussing particularly on services and agriculture -- two major issues coming up for negotiation at the World Trade Organization over the next 18 months. In a new departure, the Commission asked the UNCTAD Secretariat to analyse recent developments in trade and competition issues in the services sector.
The five-day meeting (28 September - 2 October) also examined the use of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), the UNCTAD-developed scheme which today benefits developing country exports worth over US$ 100 billion. The Commission said that the GSP and other trade preferences for developing countries should be "preserved and improved." It also called on the beneficiaries to make better use of opportunities provided under the GSP scheme.
Action should be taken so that a greater number of beneficiaries can utilize the GSP more effectively, the Commission agreed. For instance, countries providing preferential access to their markets should extend the product coverage, so as "to match to a greater extent the comparative advantage of beneficiary countries." The former were also urged to harmonize, and simplify, GSP rules of origin and to publicize details about products and preferential rates of duty among their importers. An analysis of recent GSP trade performance reveals that benefits have been concentrated among a relatively few major exporting developing countries; utilization rates have, in many cases, been below the ceiling; and few LDCs have benefited.
Looking ahead, the Commission set three Expert Meetings for the first half of 1999. These timely meetings will address key issues on trade in commodities, agriculture and air transport. The commodities meeting will consider the impact of changing market structures on commodity prices and exports of major interest to developing countries. The agricultural trade meeting will grapple with those central issues at stake for developing countries in the upcoming agriculture negotiations, due to start before the end of 1999. And the air transport meeting will clarify issues that should be on developing countries’ agenda for the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations, scheduled for early in the year 2000, and other sectoral negotiations.
Opening the Commission meeting on Monday, Mr. Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of UNCTAD, said that in considering the panorama of future trade negotiations he felt more optimistic than he did in 1986, at the start of the Uruguay Round, when he represented his country, Brazil, as a key negotiator. The degree of divergence about the content of possible trade negotiations was much higher and deeper then than it was now, he stated.
"Taking a rather optimistic view, maybe the immediate future will be more one of consolidation and of a further expansion of the progress achieved than of major revolutionary ideas," he said. "This gives me hope that we will have the possibility of finally tackling some issues that were left behind."
At the just concluded Commission meeting, one important issue for developing countries that was tackled concerned the movement of natural persons, in particular the issue of the use of "economic needs" tests. The Commission encouraged UNCTAD to work jointly with the WTO on an assessment of the impact on developing countries of liberalization under the GATS, as well as on proposing ways and means to introduce a greater degree of transparency and predictability in the application of economic needs tests.
Among other things, the Commission recommended that national Governments apply policies to encourage enterprises to take advantage of market access opportunities for the movement of natural persons, in ways which reduce "brain drain" and facilitate the acquisition of skills and to identify areas of comparative advantage in labour-intensive services. so as to facilitate their active participation in the next round of GATS negotiations. Noting the need for basic data, the Commission requested the UNCTAD secretariat to continue work on its MAST (Measures Affecting Service Trade) database and services statistics.