Economic Growth through Service Sector Trade
The services sector is the largest and fastest growing sector
of the world economy, providing more than 60% of GDP in many countries, and an
even larger share of employment.
In the year 2000, service sector trade represented over one
third of total trade in goods and services.
What is TESS?
The USAID/EGAT/OEG bureau created TESS in recognition of the growing role services
play in economic development. TESS supports service sector liberalization and advancement.
The TESS website serves as a clearinghouse for information on service sector trade.
It also provides instructions and tools to USAID missions wishing to access TESS
products and services. Click here for more information.
Important Announcement: As
of December 19, 2005 the Trade Enhancement for the Services Sector
Project (TESS Project) concluded its USAID-sponsored activities.
Our TESS website will remain online as a summary
of the project and its accomplishments. We may occasionally post
new reports and other materials.
Our work in the services sector development over
the past years has been exceedingly rewarding and professionally
satisfying. The management and staff of CARANA Corporation wish to
sincerely thank all those people who worked closely with us and so
positively supported the project. For further information about current
CARANA activities and projects around the world please visit our
corporate website at www.carana.com.
Hot Topics
 West Africa
Financial Flows
In December, the TESS Project completed the final report on West African
Financial Flows (WAFF) report focusing on the constraints and opportunities
to facilitate the expansion of remittance and trade flows within West
Africa (with a focus on Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal). The report
was presented at a regional
conference in March 2006 that included a technology fair showcasing
15 international and regional money transfer companies, who each showcased
their unique technologies to transfer money. Click
here to learn more about WAFF.
 Transport
and Logistics
Click here
to learn more about Transport and Logistics
 US-Thailand
Cooperation on the Collection of Thailand’s Services Sector Statistics
In December 2005, the TESS project completed its “Thai Stat” project,
a three phase project to help the Government of Thailand refine its
capacity to capture, classify and analyze services data by improving
presently employed systems, enhancing the international compatibility
of its services data and establishing more effective methods. Click
here to learn more about Thai Stat.
 Promoting
regional integration, transparency and accountability through improvements in
accountancy services.
In October 2005, the USAID TESS Project released the final report on
the General Accountancy Education Benchmarking (GAEB) activity. The
results of the GAEB initiative identify urgent and critical gaps in
compliance with international standards in a number of Balkan countries.
Addressing these gaps will contribute to regional and global economic
integration, increased trade and investment, better access to risk-based
credit, and increased public and private sector confidence and trust
in the accountancy profession and in the reliability and comparability
of financial reporting and auditing.
Click here to read more.
 Services
in the Development Round: Three Goals and Three Proposals
A World Bank paper released in August 2005 presents some of the challenges
in the current WTO services negotiations, goals that should be achieved
in the current Doha Development Agenda, and proposals to move the services
negotiations forward.
Click
here for the paper.
Services Update
TESS’ Services Updates provide a monthly ‘snapshot’ of highlights
relevant to trade in services and progress in services negotiations.
Fall 2005 - On November 26, Pascal Lamy, Director General of
the WTO submitted the Draft Ministerial Text for December’s Hong Kong ministerial
meeting that included language drafted by Mexico’s Fernando de Mateo, the
new chairman of the services negotiations. These negotiations “attempt to
bridge gaps between positions on different elements” in a manner that provides
an acceptable balance and to set the stage for deeper commitments as the Doha round
of negotiations continues. The text incorporates both multilateral and plurilateral
approaches to enhance liberalization.
Multilaterally, the text urges members to bind existing levels of liberalization
on a ‘best endeavor’ basis. It further calls on members to extend commitments
at existing levels of market access multilaterally across sectors of interest,
reduce or eliminate restrictions of MFN treatment, permit higher levels of foreign
ownership of services companies, place fewer restrictions on how services companies
can function, and improve commitments on the movement of persons (Mode 4).
In terms of plurilaterality, the draft ministerial text provides an alternative
to the bilateral request-offer process. It would allow groups of countries to make
collective market access requests to other members and negotiate on these requests
on a plurilateral basis before deciding on a level of liberalization to offer the
entire WTO membership. This approach has been very controversial, since a number
of members state plurilateral negotiations have no bearing within the Doha negotiating
framework and that only the multilateral request-offer approach should be used.
Although there has been significant debate over the introduction of targets and
indicators (such as benchmarking), the draft text noted that positions are too
divergent to be bridged by any compromising language. Further discussion is needed
before a consensus can be reached on this issue. The text comes after weeks, if
not months, of debate over the modalities through which services negotiations should
progress and offers measured, with limited progress in the quantity and quality
of offers to liberalize services by WTO members. The draft ministerial text can
be found on the WTO
website.
In other developments:
- On November 28, Mr. Lamy released a Secretariat note on Development
Aspects of the Doha Round to the WTO's Committee on Trade and Development,
stating that “what is already on the table can translate into
a good result for development,” adding that “it would
certainly be disastrous if what we have disappears because we fail
to move the negotiations forward”. In this note Mr. Lamy presents
the status of negotiations, and specific issues and possible gains
for developing countries. The 29-page note can be found on the WTO
website.
- The WTO released a working paper on “The
Impact of Mode 4 Liberalization on Bilateral Trade Flows”,
providing insights into the possible trade creation effects of
service trade liberalization via Mode 4. In particular the paper
suggests that temporary movements of persons, like permanent movements,
have the potential to reduce transaction costs for merchandise
trade between home and host country.
- The WTO held a seminar entitled “Liberalization in Computer
and Related Services: Sharing of Country Experiences.” The
Seminar featured presentations both from government and industry
representatives and exchanges of country experiences. Speakers offered
insights on the role of computer and related services in the development
of the IT industry and other manufacturing industries. Information
is available on the WTO
website.
- The U.S. Coalition of Services Industries presented a paper entitled, "Services
Negotiations in the Doha Round: Promise and Reality," at the
Conference on Perspectives on the Doha Development Agenda at the
University of Michigan. The paper can be found on the USCSI
website.
- The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Statistics
Division (UNSD) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin
America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC) organized a joint workshop on
the compilation of services trade statistics. The workshop (i) reviewed
the current country practices in this area in light of the recommendations
of the United Nations Statistical Commission as published in Manual
on Statistics of International Trade in Services, (ii) identified
main difficulties in establishing effective compilation mechanism,
and (iii) discussed potential solutions that would help to ensure
compilation of high quality data. Additional info can be found on
the UN
website.
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