The future of trade lies in services, and LDCs export many of them. But clearly, not nearly enough. LDCs must have a strong services industry. Without LDCs effectively participating in the world of value chains, servicification and automation, the integrity of the world trading system is in peril. The 2011 LDCs Services Waiver, as much as various FTA negotiations involving services, shifted focus on market access for services, particularly from LDCs. While many other issues including infrastructure, national regulation, financing, business know how and others obviously affect the ability of LDCs to export services, market access in target markets matters greatly.
LDC service providers, wherever they operate, tend to confirm that regulatory, tax, discriminatory treatment and classical market access issues operate as significant, sometimes formidable - and yet avoidable - obstacles to their bona fide trade. The 2011 LDC Services Waiver offers WTO Members the possibility to grant preferences to services imports from LDCs. Since 2013 a process of “operationalization” has been under way. As of 2015 twenty-four WTO Members, including all developed and several developing countries, have detailed their preferences for LDC services through notifications to the WTO. The effective value of the preferences for LDC services exports is under discussion.
UNCTAD has commissioned four pilot studies on what LDCs services and service providers need, whether waiver preferences address this need, and what more can and should be done. This session provides an opportunity for an early discussion in the broader context of market access for LDC services – under GATS; FTAs and unilateral preferences.
UNCTAD events on the margins of the Eleventh WTO Ministerial Conference
