Services are essential to the Doha agenda: WTO head Pascal Lamy urges developing countries to invest in service talks.

• Date: 01 October 2005
• Author: Lamy, Pascal
• Published date: 01 October 2005
• Author: Lamy, Pascal

If the Doha Development Agenda is to be completed in December 2006, there will need to be basic movement on several issues to match the ambitions expressed in the title and goals adopted for the round in 2001. Among these issues are services.

Services play a key role in the Doha Agenda, and countries should not leave talks on opening up services to global trade until the other issues are resolved, for several reasons:

* There is a clear link between development and benefits brought about by opening service markets. Developing countries that embraced and invested in the establishment of a service industry are clearly in the forefront of the battle against poverty and illiteracy.

* Countries with open service markets have seen greater product and process innovation, based largely on their access to foreign capital and world-class technology. The explosive growth of the Internet--and of Internet-related sectors--in liberalizing countries is only one example, however breathtaking. Availability of world-class services has enabled exporters in developing countries to capitalize on their competitive strength, whatever the goods and services they have to offer.

An increasing number of developing countries, building on foreign investment and expertise, have been able to make impressive inroads in international service markets. Opening up services has become an...