Services now constitute almost 50% of world value-added trade and are the heart of multilateral, mega-regional and regional trade negotiations, with services and services-related issues comprising well over half of the disciplines in modern trade agreements.
Even though all LDCs and developing countries export services, improving the efficiency and contribution of services to domestic economic transformation and sustainable growth faces a number of challenges. One of the most significant ones are inadequately designed and/or implemented regulatory frameworks. This hinders the potential for services to support inclusive development, especially the participation of SMEs and women in the economy. In addition, the external context for services trade has been rapidly evolving with renewed discussions in the WTO on domestic regulation, and the incorporation of new and modernized disciplines on domestic regulations in recently concluded trade agreements such as the CETA and Pacific Alliance, as well as future agreements such as the TiSA and TPP. Policy-makers and regulators need to repond to these challenges in order to craft domestic regulations that are effective, WTO-compatible, inclusive and take into account new developments.
This session objective is two-fold: 1) exploring the contribution of services to sustainable development, in particular to overall economic competitiveness and inclusion; 2) explore how domestic regulations can contribute to this objective, in particular, what could be done at domestic level, and multilaterally.
