Ref. Ares(2017)4308961 - 04/09/2017
Ref. Ares(2017)5324690 - 31/10/2017
14 April 2016
Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) Negotiations
As the 17th round of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) negotiations
is currently underway in Geneva this week, the Global Services Coalition
(GSC), representing services enterprises and sector-specific services
associations in our respective countries and regions, call on the trade
negotiators to intensify efforts toward a high ambition agreement.
The GSC is encouraged by the ambitious plan for the year 2016 where
many rounds of talks have been scheduled and two sets of deadlines for
revised offers have been agreed upon. This demonstrates a clear
willingness to seek to conclude the negotiations in the near future.
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This week’s round is critical to ensure that concrete progress is made
toward stabilising texts of the core agreement and of regulatory
disciplines in crucial areas such as domestic regulation, transparency in
licensing procedures, in telecommunication and e-commerce (particularly
data flows and prohibitions on forced data localization for all sectors),
financial services, and delivery services. Further work needs to be done
on important issues for international trade such as temporary mobility of
service providers, environmental services and transportation.
Services industries continue to share the view that the substance of the
deal remains paramount. GSC calls upon the negotiators to make utmost
strides to conclude the talks by the end of this year, consistent with
ensuring a high standard and ambitious agreement. Efforts need to
continue to be made by all parties to push towards a conclusion by
following the agreed timetable and registering significant progress at each
step, notably ambitious market offers by end of May 2016 that provide
new meaningful business opportunities. We encourage Parties to consider
the planning of an additional TiSA ministers meeting in due time.
The GSC recalls that latest figures from the OECD/WTO Trade in Value
Added (TiVA) database show that services represent roughly half of total
global exports. For much too long, services in multilateral negotiations
have been hostage to other negotiating topics. The TiSA offers the best
opportunity to overcome that impasse and establish a template for 21st
century services trade, for the benefit of the world economy.
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