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论文题目：What are the major changes taking place in the world that are driving the growth of the service economy? Illustrate your answer with reference to one particular branch of services. What are the likely implications of this for world trade? Lecture 11, Service Trade Lecture Content:- • The nature of services Seminar Questions for discussion:- • Why are services becoming more important in trade? How does this affect trade? Essay Question: What are the major changes taking place in the world that are driving the growth of the service economy? Illustrate your answer with reference to one particular branch of services. What are the likely implications of this for world trade? Recommended reading:- Grimwade, N, International Trade: New Patterns of Trade, Production and Investment, London and New York: Routledge, 2000, Chapter 10 - E resource from library Dicken, P, Global Shift: The Internalisation of Economic Activity, 5th edition, London: Sage, 2007, Chapter 13-14 Grimwade, N, International Trade Policy – a Contemporary Analysis, London: Routledge, 1996, ch 8 (pp 283-309) Hoekman, B and Kostecki, M, The Political Economy of the World Trading: the WTO and Beyond System, 2nd edition, Oxford: OUP, 2001, ch 7#p#分页标题#e# Hoekman, B, Tentative first steps: an assessment of the Uruguay Round agreement on services, Centre for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR), Discussion Paper No 1150, 1995 Kobayashi-Hillary, Mark, Outsourcing to India: the Offshore Advantage, Springer: Heidelberg, 2004, Part 2 The Economist, A world of work, a survey of outsourcing, November 13th, 2004 http://www.ukassignment.org/Marketing/ Smith, David, Offshoring: Political Myths and Economic Reality, The World Economy, Volume 29 Number 3, March, 2006 Introduction We conclude the lecture programme with a look at trade in services. One of the most important developments in world trade over the past half century has been the rapid growth of trade in services. Although trade in services is hard to measure, the best estimates of the WTO are that roughly 20% of world trade now consists of services, as opposed to goods. For some countries, services account for an even higher proportion of their export earnings e.g. the US (35%), France (39%), Spain (48%), Norway (38%) and Austria (61%). Generally, services are more important in developed than developing country exports. The USA and EU together account for 42% of world exports of services. However, developing countries are major exporters of certain kinds of services e.g. India for business services. In this lecture, we examine the nature of trade in services and seek to explain why service trade has become more important. We also discuss the phenomena of outsourcing and off-shoring in relation to services, which has attracted much controversy in recent years. Finally, we examine the nature of government regulation of the service sector and its implications for trade. This leads to the role played by services in international trade negotiations, including regional trading agreements.
Services have four characteristics which distinguish them from goods:- • intangibility – goods can be touched and felt, but services cannot Because services have these characteristics, most services have to be produced and consumed at the same time. By way of contrast, goods can be stored, so that consumption can happen after production has taken place. For this reason, services were, in the past, regarded as part of the non-tradable sector of the economy. It also meant that services were generally performed close to where the consumer was situated. However, this is no longer the case. The consumption of many services can now happen some time after production has taken place. Many services can be stored. Moreover, both service providers and consumers have become more mobile. Consumers are willing to move to where service providers are situated and service-providers are often willing to move to where consumers are located. As a result, many services have become tradable.#p#分页标题#e# The service sector of any country is usually broken down into the following sub-categories:- 1. Construction services The service sector is generally measured in one of two ways:- 1. The contribution of services to total output or GDP. In the United Kingdom, this rose from 53% in 1970 to 67% in 1995 and 74% in 2005. Within the service sector, business services contributed 14% to GDP. 2. The share of services in total employment. In 2005, the service sector accounted for 82.3% of total employment, whereas manufacturing employed only 11.8% of the labour force. Moreover, over the period from 1986 to 2005, employment in services rose by 17%, whereas employment in manufacturing fell by 37%. . In all the advanced industrialised countries, the service sector contributes more to GDP and employment than manufacturing and the contribution has been rising as in the UK. The Growth of the Service Economy Some important factors account for the growth of the service economy in all of the advanced industrialised countries in recent decades:- 1. Some of the increase in service activity is due, simply, to a tendency for firms to contract out specialist activities that were previously performed in-house. This is a process that is sometimes referred to as splintering. Since it amounts to no more than a reclassification of an activity which was performed just as much before as after, it constitutes a largely spurious increase in the extent of service activity taking place. 2. Some of the increase in services is due to rising affluence. As households become more affluent, they spend more of their incomes on services and less on goods. However, households demand better quality and more sophisticated services. Yet another consequence of increasing affluence is greater leisure time, which results in an increased demand for services such as health and fitness centres, restaurants and catering, entertainment and culture, travel and tourism, etc. Another trend is for affluent households to buy-in services that they previously performed themselves. Examples include cleaning, gardening, child-care, care for the elderly. 3. Technological changes have also increased demand for services. Of particular importance has been the so-called #p#分页标题#e# 4. The growth of the welfare state in the advanced industrialised countries has created an increased demand for public services (e.g. education, health, nurseries, social care) over a longer time period, spanning back to the end of World War 2. A more recent trend has been for the governments to privatise parts of the public sector, resulting in more public services being bought-in from the private sector. Services such as refuse collection, street cleaning, meals-for-the-elderly, health care and even health treatment and prison management have all been privatised in different countries in recent decades. 5. A major factor has been the growing tendency for firms to outsource service activities. The advantages of doing so is that firms can reduce their costs by outsourcing the activity to other firms that are more efficient and raise the quality of the services by buying services from firms that are specialists in the particular activity. In theory, almost any service within the value chain can be outsourced. The growing complexity of many of the services performed by companies in-house is another reason that may favour outsourcing. Outsourcing has, in turn, contributed to the growth of multi-unit service firms, who provide a particular service to a large number of other firms. Because they do so on a large-scale, average costs are lower, which, in turn, encourages more firms to buy the service from them. Furthermore, as the market expands for such services, service firms are able to specialise on a narrow range of services, so making possible further cost savings. Trade in Services Trade in services is different to trade in goods. Trade in goods takes place whenever goods cross borders. Some services can be traded in the same way. These are what different writers have called separated services, disembodied services or long-distance services. They have been so called because the service element has been separated from its original production or ‘disembodied’ and, instead, ‘embodied’ within a good for separate sale. Obvious examples are books, scientific documents, legal documents, computer software, musical recordings and films. A further category of services can be transferred across borders because of the emergence of new technologies. Examples are television programmes that are broadcast by satellite, other satellite messages, telephone or fax messages and transactions through the internet. However, not all services can be separated and, therefore, traded in this way. Nevertheless, trade in such services can still take place. This will happen if either the service-provider or the service buyer or both are willing to move. Such services are called non-separated services or factor services. These are services where production and consumption must take place at the same time but where trade is still possible if either the service-provider or service buyer is prepared to move from one country to the other. Trade in a service may be deemed to take place whenever “domestic factors receive income from non-residents in exchange for their services” (Stern and Hoekman, 1987). This can include the sale of non-separated services through the movement of the service provider or buyer, as well as the exchange of separated services across borders in the same manner as goods.#p#分页标题#e# The normal practice is to distinguish between four modes of service delivery in international trade:- 1. Cross-border trade – services are transferred across borders in much the same manner as with goods through telecommunications, postal mail, electronic mail or through the service being embodied in a good. This kind of service trade does not require either the provider or buyer to move. Examples are books, films, software, video games, musical recordings, television broadcasts. 2. Consumption of the service takes place abroad or so-called provider-located services - where the buyer of the service moves to where the producer or provider is located. Examples are tourism, education, health services or medical/dental treatment. Consumers are more mobile than they used to be, take more holidays abroad and often travel abroad to obtain certain services. This category may also include certain kind of foreign transport services, such as air travel or shipping lines. 3. Commercial presence abroad or so-called demander-located services - where the service provider must move to where the buyer is located. This kind of trade requires direct investment abroad by service-providers, either through the creation of a new company in the foreign country or through a merger with or acquisition of a local company in the foreign country. However, it may include other arrangements, such as a franchising agreement whereby a local firm provides the service using local employees. Examples of such services are banking and insurances, distribution services, telecommunications, fast-food. 4. Movement of natural persons – where natural persons who are themselves service providers move to a foreign country. These might be self-employed workers (e.g. dentists, doctors, plumbers, etc) or the employees of a service company who cross a border to sell services for their employer (e.g. management consultants, engineers, construction workers, etc). It follows that trade in services will sometimes take a different form to trade in goods. While trade in separated services will involve goods crossing borders, trade in non-separated services will result in movements of factors of production (capital and labour) and people. Thus, foreign direct investment and labour migration are the form which such trade takes, rather than cross-border trade in things. Measuring Trade in Services The existence of different methods of service delivery makes it extremely difficult to measure trade in services. Traditionally, a country’s trade in services is recorded under the heading of “services and transfers” in the current account of the balance of payments. (This is often referred to as a country’s invisible trade to distinguish it from merchandise trade or visible trade). This includes five categories:- 1. Services in the strict sense – receipts less payments 2. Investment income from abroad in the form of interest, profits and dividends less investment income paid abroad#p#分页标题#e# 3. Labour income – wages of non-resident workers transmitted from abroad less wages of migrant workers transferred abroad 4. Government transactions – payments made to maintain overseas embassies and military presence abroad less the reverse The first measures service trade in the strict meaning of the word or what are sometimes termed commercial services. The second is also relevant as this will include the income that service firms derive from their investments abroad less the income earned by foreign, service firms present in the host country. However, as this includes manufacturing firms as well as service firms, it overestimates the income earned from selling demander-located services requiring a commercial presence abroad. The third category measures the incomes arising from the movement of natural persons, the fourth mode of service delivery, and so is highly relevant. However, it should be noted that overseas workers may not remit all the wages they earn to the home country. Statistics on service trade divide service trade into three broad groups:- 1. Transport services – the major transport services are maritime (sea) transport services (freight and passenger), air freight and passenger transport and land transport services. In 2005, trade in transport services amounted to $570 billion or 23.6% of world trade in commercial services. Countries with a trade surplus in transport services included Denmark ($7.7 billion), Korea ($3.9 billion), the Netherlands ($6.8 billion), Hong Kong, Greece and Norway (WTO, International Trade Statistics, 2006) 2. Travel services or tourism – expenditure of non-residents staying in the national territory for a short period of time (usually a year) less expenditure by residents in the foreign country, whether for leisure, work, health or study). In 2005, trade in travel services amounted to $685 billion or 28.4% of world trade in commercial services. Countries with a trade surplus in tourism were the United States ($28.4 billion), Spain ($32.7 billion), France ($11 billion), Italy $13 billion), China ($7.5 billion), Turkey, Austria, Greece, Mexico and Switzerland (WTO, International Trade Statistics, 2006) 3. Other commercial services – a wide range of services, including:- • Insurance, including transport insurance In 2006, world exports of commercial services amounted to $1160 billion or 48.1% of world trade in commercial services. The largest net exporters of commercial services were the United States ($69.4 billion), the United Kingdom ($69 billion), India ($17.2 billion), Luxembourg and Hong Kong (WTO, International Trade Statistics, 2006).#p#分页标题#e#
Why has trade in services grown over the past quarter century. Undoubtedly, some of the growth of services trade mirrors the growth of the service economy within the advanced industrialised countries of the world. This, however, can only provide a very partial explanation, given that many services supplied domestically are not widely traded internationally. Michael Porter in his book entitled The Competitive Advantage of Nations (Porter, 1990) identifies six important changes that have contributed to the internationalisation of service activity:- 1. Similarity of service need - many service needs in different countries have become more alike, fostering the growth of the global service firm which is able to provide much the same type of service in several different countries, perhaps modified to take account of small national differences. The internationalisation of the fast-food industry reflects the fact that the service offered by companies such as McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken is much the same across a large number of countries. A similar trend is apparent in the hotel industry. The same is true of many business services. 2. More mobile and more informed buyers of services – information passes around the world more rapidly, transport to different countries has become faster and people travel more. As a result, businesses buy services from well-established foreign firms rather than relying on local firms. Reductions in currency restrictions have also made it easier for firms to pay for these services. 3. Rising economies of scale and geographic scope have encouraged the expansion of service firms both domestically and internationally. In many service industries (e.g. banking), fixed costs have risen as a share of total costs, which means that costs per unit have fallen with an increase in the scale and scope of operations. These fixed costs include the costs of technology development and training infrastructure (e.g. banking). Global service firms may also be able to establish a global brand reputation, which gives them an advantage when competing with local service firms (e.g. advertising, banking). 4. Greater mobility of service personnel – service personnel are better able to travel to foreign nations to deliver services (e.g. construction and engineering services, consultancy services) 5. Greater ability to interact with remote buyers – through the telephone, internet, rapid parcel delivery. As many services require regular contact between the provider and buyer, this is very important 6. Marked differences exist in the cost, quality and range of services available in different countries so that, when barriers to trade are lowered, considerable scope exists for increased trade and specialisation. The movement towards greater de-regulation of services may also have been an important factor in the growth of service trade. Governments have removed many of the restrictions that they applied in the past in many service industries. One aspect of this has been greater freedom for service firms to set up in a foreign country and sell services to buyers in the country. Service Outsourcing and Off-shoring A very important development over the past decade or more has been the growth of outsourcing of business services. The term outsourcing is generally used to refer to the practice of companies contracting out work to outside specialists that they previously performed in-house. Where the outside firm is located in a different country, the term off-shoring is used. Outsourcing of business services is a response to the growing complexity of administrative processes within the modern corporation, especially those concerned with managing information. Outsourcing is a way in which companies can cope with these complexities. Thus, increasingly, large companies have outsourced their information technology departments, business processing activities, accounting departments, payroll departments and so forth. One of the major motives for firms in developed countries off-shoring is to take advantage of lower labour costs in developing countries. Conceivably, any developing country could attract such off-shoring. However, only a small number of countries have been successful in doing so. India has become the most important location for off-shoring, especially the southern part of the country in the so-called “golden triangle”, linking Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai. Key factors driving this process have been the spread of the internet, declining telecommunication costs and the increased ease with which the same office machinery can be used in different locations. Such a process, however, is not without difficulties. In particular, it presupposes a high level of trust and cross-cultural understanding between the company undertaking off-shoring and the overseas firm providing the service. There may also be problems in finding white collar workers in the foreign country with the necessary skills and right attitude to work and that are capable of being trained at distance. India offered advantages to firms in Britain and the USA seeking an outsourcing location in much the same way as China did in manufacturing. Wages were low and workers were prepared to work long hours and undertake often very repetitive jobs. At the same time, a large part of the population spoke English. The white collar workforce was also relatively well trained and qualified. The growth of India’s outsourcing industry has been comparatively recent. It began in the late 1980s when a number of mainly American firms set up IT subsidiaries in Bangalore to take advantage of the large white collar workforce that existed. At the turn of the century, however, many of these companies began to outsource work to local companies. Companies such as Wipro, TCS and Infosys in IT services flourished. As they were able to do the work required at lower cost, they grew at the expense of foreign firms’ own captive operations. Many of the latter off were sold off to local Indian firms. In much the same way, the business processing sector grew in India in the late 1990s. To begin with, foreign firms set up their own captive companies. At the same time, however, a cluster of local call-centre operators came into being. Subsequently, specialist foreign firms offering IT and BP services have set up in India, offering increased competition for local firms. In recent years, however, competition from other countries has increased.#p#分页标题#e# Although outsourcing obviously benefits the host country, the effects on the home countries are more ambiguous. The biggest cost to the home country is a loss of jobs in the service sector. Moreover, unlike outsourcing in the manufacturing sector, the jobs that are destroyed are those of middle-class, white collar workers. This has created much concern in western industrialised countries, such as the USA, Britain and Germany. The picture is a complex one because, in some cases, outsourcing is a response to a shortage of various kinds of labour in these countries. In this case, far from destroying jobs, outsourcing may simply enable jobs to be filled that otherwise would not be. An estimate by the management consultants, McKinsey, is that outsourcing could lead to a loss of 3.3 million jobs in the USA over the next ten years (quoted in Smith, 2006). However, account also need to be taken of the benefits of outsourcing. Outsourcing will result in some new jobs being created elsewhere in the economy. The effect is similar to that of any technological change. For example, the introduction of automation in the manufacturing process destroyed some jobs. However, by reducing costs and boosting profits, it encouraged more investment by other firms. At the same time, by lowering prices, it increased real incomes and stimulated demand. The major benefit of outsourcing of business services for home countries is that costs are lowered as labour costs are much lower. This, in turn, leads to lower prices, raising the real incomes of consumers. Lower inflation makes possible lower interest rates, which, in turn, results in faster economic growth. At the same time, some workers are re-employed in higher value-added/higher productivity jobs. The combination of all of these effects is to raise the GDP of the home country and make possible a faster rate of economic growth. A higher GDP means more jobs. Attempts to quantify these effects have come up with a variety of forecasts. In the USA, Global Insight, an economic consultancy, has estimated that, while 250,000 IT service jobs will disappear by 2008, 600,000 additional IT jobs will be created (Global Insight, 2004). Account should also be taken of the fact that demographic trends in many developed countries mean that, in the absence of off-shoring, labour supply will fail to match the growth in labour demand. In the absence of outsourcing, growth will suffer. Government Regulation of the Service Sector In most countries, the service sector is one of the most highly regulated sectors in the economy. Nicolaides (1989) has given three reasons for this:- 1. The information available to buyers of services is often imperfect or incomplete. Because of the intangible nature of services and the fact that a service may only be purchased at the same time as it is provided, buyers cannot assess the quality of a service in advance of consumption. A service is an example of what is called an “experience good” as opposed to a “search good” where quality can be assessed before consumption takes place. This gives rise to a problem of asymmetric information between service-providers and buyers. The service-provider has more information about the service than the buyer. This would seem to be particularly true of professional services like accountancy, medicine and law. The existence of asymmetric information creates a problem of moral hazard, namely, that the service provider can make higher profits by reducing the quality of the service provided below the perceived quality. As a result, government regulation may be needed to protect the consumer from low-quality services.#p#分页标题#e# 2. Due to the existence of asymmetric information, services give rise to an adverse selection problem. Whereby service buyers lack sufficient information to distinguish between high-quality and low-quality service providers, high-quality service providers will suffer. This is a case of the honest being tainted by the practices of the dishonest. For example, garages that provide good quality of car servicing may suffer because of the existence of disreputable garages that are either incompetent or dishonest. The building trade is another example. Self-regulation may be the solution. For example, associations of service providers may enter into contracts with consumers guaranteeing that certain minimum standards will be maintained by members of the association. Although self-regulation will serve to increase consumer confidence, there is the risk that some service providers will “free ride” on the reputation of the others. In this case, government regulation may also be needed 3. Services sometimes suffer from a problem of systemic failure. This can be seen in the banking sector where the failure of one bank may have adverse effects on the entire banking system if the confidence of depositors is undermined. Regulation is needed to prevent unsound or imprudent banks from inflicting damage on competent ones. Again, self-regulation may be sufficient, for example, in ensuring that banks act prudently. However, to strengthen the confidence of investors, it may be necessary to give this legal backing. A requirement that banks contribute towards some deposit insurance scheme to protect depositors from a deposit-taking institution being forced to close its doors might be an additional way of reducing the risk of systemic failure. For all of these reasons, some form of regulation of the service sector is needed on efficiency grounds. Such regulation may be imposed by the government or markets may regulate themselves, by establishing their own rules, institutions and enforcement procedures. For example, until quite recently, the banking and financial services industry in the UK was partly self-regulated and some aspects remain so today. Clearly, however, a major problem with self-regulation is that rules and standards cannot be easily enforced. A further problem is that self-regulation may be used by existing service providers to exclude potential entrants to the industry and, thereby, to restrict competition. On the other hand, government is regulation is likely to be more costly. In particular, the need to ensure that firms are complying with the regulation is likely to be costly, including the costs of prosecuting any breeches of the rules. The main aim of service regulation is to tackle the distortions or imperfections discussed above that characterise markets for services. This may take several forms. First, regulators can ensure that buyers are provided with more and better quality information so that they can make the right choice when buying. However, improving information may not be enough to overcome the problem of asymmetric information. It may also be necessary for regulators to require firms to achieve minimum levels of quality and standard in the service they supply. In many countries builders, plumbers and electricians have to undertake their work according to certain industry standards. Failure to do so may lead to the company concerned losing its certificate of authentication. Third, regulators may wish to lay down rules about how a service is provided and by whom. For example, there are strict rules in most countries about who can practice medicine and about the procedures for doing so.#p#分页标题#e# However, whenever countries engage in trade, there are likely to be spill-over effects of regulatory policies on service firms in other countries. This happens in two ways. First, the regulatory policy of one country may discriminate against service providers in another country, who are seeking to sell their services in the former. Of course, there may be perfectly good reasons for this. The service-providers in another country may supply services of a poorer quality or may lack the competence of service providers in the home country. This may be due to the absence of regulation in the foreign country or laxer regulation. On the other hand, they may be discriminated against for no other reason other than that they are from another country. For example, local service firms may seek to restrict entry to foreign, service firms simply in order to reduce competition and protect their share of the local market. Such discrimination constitutes a trade barrier. Second, government regulation may restrict entry of foreign, service providers to the home market. This may arise for several reasons. One is incompatibility between the rules of different countries in terms of firms that are allowed to sell a certain kind of service. Firms that are allowed to do so in the foreign country may not be allowed to do so in the home country because the rules are different. For example, one country may not recognise the professional qualifications of another country (e.g. accountancy, medicine, etc). Another reason is that the government in the home country may apply stricter entry requirements on firms than in other countries. For example, banks may be required to hold larger capital reserves than in other countries. A further possibility is that the entry requirements may have a more restrictive effect on foreigners. Professionals in the foreign country might be required to undertake additional exams in the foreign country before they can practice. Finally, restrictions on the movement of natural persons may prevent foreign, service providers from entering the country in order to sell services. Most countries impose restrictions on workers migrating from other countries. These may require immigrants to obtain work permits and/or residence permits. Because of these spill-over effects, governments of different countries may wish to include service trade in any trading agreements they enter into with other countries. As with goods, the aim of such agreements would be to offer service providers in the foreign country easier access to the home country in return for equivalent concessions by the foreign country in respect of service providers in the home country. However, negotiating freer trade in services in generally more difficult than for trade in goods. One reason is the complexity of the measures that impede service trade. As we have seen, these concern laws introduced by different countries for specific service sectors, rather than border controls, such as tariffs or quotas. In some cases, these reflect genuine differences between countries about the degree to which a particular sector should be regulated and the standards required. A further difficulty is that, unlike tariffs, trade barriers in services cannot be quantified, which makes bargaining between countries more difficult. #p#分页标题#e# Service Trade and the GATT Just as service trade is covered by many bilateral and regional trading agreements between countries, so too service trade is subject to international trading rules similar to those which apply for goods. However, these rules developed somewhat later than those applying to goods. When the GATT was drafted in 1947, little thought was given to trade in services. In part, this was because trade in services was much less important than trade in goods. In part, it was because services were not though to be any different to trade in goods, so that the same rules would do for both. In the 1980s, however, a number of the developed countries began to press for changes to the GATT to incorporate service trade. In particular, they were keen to include service trade on the agenda of GATT rounds, with the aim of securing better access for their service exports in foreign markets. Not surprisingly, the pressure to include services came from developed countries, such as the USA and EC, with a strong service sector and for which services constituted a major part of their export earnings. As a result, services were included on the agenda of the Uruguay Round launched in 1986. To begin with, the developing countries were opposed to trade in services being included on the agenda of the new round. Developing countries were fearful that developed countries would seek a trade-off, in which developing countries would have to offer concessions on services in return for improved access for their agricultural and manufacturing exports to the markets of the developed countries. However, there were also fears that service liberalisation would have a damaging effect on their economies. In particular, developing countries were afraid that their service industries (e.g. banking) would come to be dominated by foreign firms, undermining their sovereignty and increasing their dependency on the developed countries. There was a concern that local service firms would not be able to compete and would be forced to close down, resulting in reduced competition. On the other hand, developed countries argued that a vibrant and efficient service sector would help improve economic performance by lowering costs and prices for local businesses and households. It was also the case that some developing countries had strong service industries of their own, which would benefit for greater freedom to export to other countries.#p#分页标题#e#
The new agreement, entitled the General Agreement on Services (GATS), established a new set of rules to govern trade in services equivalent to that existing for goods. The GATS is divided into four parts, as follows:- 1. Parts 1 and 2 set out general obligations and disciplines that all countries must adhere to. These include the principle of Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) treatment, which is applied to goods. This means that a signatory of the GATS must treat other GATS countries equally in any restriction or other measure it implies on services. However, countries can request temporary exemption of a particular sector from these provisions for a period not exceeding ten years. Other general obligations include provisions covering transparency (openness about rules, regulations and procedures affecting service trade) and a range of other measures. These general obligations and disciplines are set out in Parts 1 and II of the GATS. 2. Parts 3 and 4 set out a list of specific commitments, which countries have, though negotiation, agreed to apply only to specific service sectors and sub-sectors. These are listed in each country’s schedules. These commitments include guarantees of market access for service firms from other GATT countries and guarantees to apply national treatment for foreign, service suppliers in those sectors listed in their schedules. Te latter is defined as ‘treatment no less favourable than that it accords to its own like services and service suppliers’. Attached to the framework agreement, there are a number of annexes listing sectors that are subject to special provisions. At the moment, these include a list of sectors in particular countries that are exempt from MFN requirements, an annex on the temporary movement of natural persons supplying services or employed by a service supplier and sector-specific annexes for financial services, telecommunications, air transport services and maritime transport services. In the negotiations that followed the creation of the GATS, all the major industrialised countries made substantial offers covering a wide range of service industries. Estimates by the WTO were that high-income countries made specific commitments of some kind on roughly 53.3% of all services and developing countries on 15.1% (Hoekman,B and Kostecki, M, 2001, pp 257). However, many of the offers took the form of commitments to maintain the status quo, rather than to eliminate any particular restrictions or distortions. Nevertheless, the fact that existing practices were, effectively bound by their incorporation in country schedules was significant. At least, the degree of restriction could not be arbitrarily increased as before.#p#分页标题#e# Finally, it was also agreed that the members of the GATS would enter into a subsequent round of negotiations no later than five years after the agreement comes into force to achieve a ‘progressively higher level of liberalisation’. However, it was specifically recognised that greater flexibility should be allowed for developing countries in the opening up of their services sectors in accordance with their ‘development situation’. These have now become part of the uncompleted Doha Round. Following the signing of the GATS, further negotiations took place covering three sectors – financial services, telecommunications and maritime transport services – where it had not been possible to reach agreement. Subsequently, separate agreements were negotiated for two of these sectors, financial services and telecommunications. The agreement on financial services, which was concluded in December, 1997 was especially important given the extent of trade affected.
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