Financial thoughts

A World Trade Organisation (WTO) mediator issued new proposals on Monday for opening up services such as telecoms and banking as part of a global trade deal.

But the new text, replacing a previous document isued in February, did not set dates for revised offers or final commitments in the services negotiations.

The document, by Mexico’s WTO ambassador, Fernando de Mateo y Venturini, who chairs the services talks, showed big differences remain between developed and developing countries on how to proceed.

“Members shared the view that substantial efforts were needed to reach a successful conclusion of the negotiations,” Mateo said in his report, summarizing progress in the services talks in the WTO’s Doha round over the past few months.

Reflecting the difficulties in reaching agreement, Mateo entitled his document a report with a draft annex, rather than a formal negotiating text, as three WTO members — Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela — argue that no formal services text is needed.

Together with revised texts for Doha’s core chapters of agriculture and industrial goods, the new document serves as a blueprint for a possible meeting of ministers to reach an outline deal in the round, now in its seventh year.

Besides talks on agriculture and industry, ministers would also hold a “signaling conference” to indicate their intentions in services overnight payday loans. That would allow, for example, a country that agrees to a big cut in farm tariffs to take comfort from a probable market opening in telecoms elsewhere.

FRAMEWORK FOR AGREEMENT 

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