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Services in Doha: What's on the Table?

This report explores the current status, desired goals, and strategies to achieve a multilateral services agreement in Doha. It analyzes the liberalization of various sectors and highlights the impact of trade policies on market concentration, quality of services, and economic isolation. The report emphasizes the importance of services reform for trade facilitation and discusses the potential gains from labor mobility. Furthermore, it proposes a phased approach to gradually reduce barriers while considering development objectives.

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Services in Doha: What's on the Table?

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  1. Services in Doha: What is on the Table? Aaditya Mattoo (based on research with Ingo Borchert and Batshur Gootiiz) ICTSD-World Bank-WTO2 November 2010

  2. Three questions: • Where are we today? • Where would we like to be? • How do we get there?

  3. Financial, telecommunications, transport, retail, professional

  4. New World Bank services policy database shows substantial but uneven unilateral liberalization Restrictiveness of services trade policy in 102 countries Source: Borchert, Gootiiz and Mattoo (2010)

  5. Transportation and professional services are among the most protected sectors everywhere Services trade restrictiveness index (STRI) by regions and sectors Source: Borchert,Gootiiz, Mattoo 2010

  6. Uruguay Round Commitments and Actual Policy Source: Borchert,Gootiiz, Mattoo 2010

  7. Uruguay Round Commitments,Doha Offers and Actual Policy Source: Borchert,Gootiiz, Mattoo 2010

  8. Comparison of UR commitments, Doha offers, and actual policies by region Source: Bochert, Gootiiz, Mattoo 2010

  9. Comparison of UR commitment, Doha Offers, and policies by Sector Source: Bochert, Gootiiz, Mattoo 2010

  10. Source: Bochert, Gootiiz and Mattoo (2010)

  11. Source: Bochert, Gootiiz and Mattoo (2010)

  12. Source: Bochert, Gootiiz and Mattoo (2009) “CP req”: commercial presence required; NC: no UR Round commitments and Offer reflects the commitment.

  13. Where would we like to be? Two levels of ambition for multilateral services negotiations • to harvest unilateral liberalization. • Difficulty of making the required legislative changes in negotiating context • Blistering technology cycle versus ponderous negotiating cycle • to advance liberalization beyond unilateral levels.

  14. Regional distribution of other commercial services exports, percentage shares, 2000 and 2009 Average growth rate 1998-2008 of other commercial services exports, selected countries, percent, Mode 1: Shared interest in cross-border trade in business services Source: WTO “International trade statistics 2010”, Tab. III-9 Source: WTO Trade in Services Database, Other commercial services

  15. More restrictive transport policies are associated with more expensive and poorer quality logistics services Availability of competitively priced logistics services Quality of logistics services Source: Borchert, Gootiiz, Grover and Mattoo (2010)

  16. In air transport and telecommunications services, applied trade policies in landlocked countries are almost twice as restrictive as in coastal countries. Land-locked or policy-locked? Restrictive services policies deepen economic isolation Source: Borchert, Gootiiz, Grover and Mattoo (2010) • More restrictive policies lead to higher market concentration and more limited access to services even after taking into account the influence of geography and incomes

  17. Services reform vital for trade facilitation • “Trade-facilitating” investments will earn a poor return unless they are accompanied by meaningful services reform. • But countries (including the landlocked) cannot unilaterally reform international transport. The policies in other countries, industrial and developing, also limit competition. • The de jure and/or de facto exclusion of transport would be a serious omission from a “development round”.

  18. Mode 2: Example: the US could save over $1.4 billion annually even if only one in ten US patients chooses to undergo just 15 types of low-risk treatment abroad Source: Mattoo and Rathindran (2006)

  19. Mode 3: Example: India’s reform of services sectors

  20. …has boosted not only productivity and exports in services, but also the performance of downstream manufacturing industries New study based on panel data for 4,000 Indian firms for the 1990-2005 period finds that banking, telecommunications and transport reforms all have significant positive effects on the productivity of manufacturing firms Source: Arnold, Javorcik, Lipscomb and Mattoo (2008).

  21. Mode 4: Shared global interest in greater mobility of individual service providers • Stong intuitive and empirical evidence of large gains from labor mobility, skilled and unskilled (e.g. Winters, et al.). • A 10% increase in the number of foreign graduate students would • raise patent applications by 4.5%, university patent grants by 6.8% and non-university patent grants by 5.0%. Increases in skilled immigration also have a positive, but smaller, • impact on patenting. Chellaraj, Maskus and Mattoo (2008)

  22. What should we aim for in a services agreement? • To lock in existing openness, especially on cross-border trade (mode 1) and consumption abroad (mode 2) • To gradually phase out barriers, especially in transport and foreign investment (mode 3), consistently with development objectives • To at least begin to allow and facilitate the movement of individual service providers (mode 4)

  23. III. How do we get there?

  24. Why have countries been reluctant to commit multilaterally? First, diminished government willingness because of three concerns: • Loss of regulatory freedom • Regulatory unpreparedness • Lack of regulatory cooperation The crisis has enhanced these fears.

  25. Market access negotiations need to be supported by greater regulatory cooperation • Because while services are increasingly globalized, regulation remains national • More coherent assistance to developing countries to build regulatory institutions and institute access-widening policies: “aid for services trade” and a “services knowledge platform” • More cooperation on prudential regulation (e.g. on finance and data flows) and pro-competitive regulation (e.g. on transport and information services) • More cooperation between host and source countries on mode 4 (as in bilateral labor agreements) Some of this cooperation will necessarily be bilateral and regional

  26. Why have countries been reluctant to commit multilaterally? Second, diminished business interest because of: • Unilateral and bilateral/regional liberalization, • Growing economic interdependence has reduced likelihood of policy reversal • Negotiating pessimism Has the crisis vindicated or dispelled complacence? How can we break out of the low-level equilibrium trap lo low expectations and limited engagement?

  27. Achieving parity of ambition for services: can we break the negotiating stalemate? Proposal: Instead of incremental, sectoral or modal negotiations, is it possible to define a final package which is balanced, developmentally desirable and commercially relevant? Would a critical mass of countries consider committing to: • No new restrictions, especially on cross border trade in business services, and more open transport • Precommitment to reform, especially on FDI, and to greater regulatory cooperation and assistance • Greater scope for temporary migration with source country obligations

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