Trade in Services
The lack of information on trade in services liberalisation has been recognised first and foremost at the multilateral level in the WTO where developing countries in particular have experienced difficulties in meaningful engagement in the negotiations cluster due to the fact that they did not have a full understanding of the impact of future or past liberalization on trade in services.
The positive role of that adequate assessment of liberalisation of trade in services has been emphasised to the extent that it became a substantive agenda time in the Special Sessions of the Trade in Services Council during the Doha Development Agenda. However assessment on trade in services as mandated by the Services Council has never been undertaken and as COMESA members continued to deal with these challenges at the WTO level they were now faced more challenges at the regional and bilateral level. The use of an assessment on trade in services as a tool for establishing the importance of appropriate sequencing of negotiations on trade in services became an imperative.
Through RTFP, DFID has financed a comprehensive assessment of services in the COMESA region covering services in Finance (banking, insurance and securities); communications; transport; construction and related engineering; business services; tourism; health; education; energy; distribution as well as Mode IV. National GATS templates were developed and measures affecting services converted into GATS-type language.