Preferential Trade Agreements and Trade Liberalization Efforts in the OIC Member States
With Special Emphasis on the TPS-OIC
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Most services barriers are regulatory in nature, and their impact is frequently to increase the
costs of operation faced by foreign providers. PTAs covering services tend to follow two broad
approaches with respect to liberalization of services trade and investment. Some PTAs tend to
replicate the use, found in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), of a positive-
list or hybrid approach to market opening whereby agreements list sectors, sub- sectors, and
modes of supply in which governments are willing to make binding liberalization
commitments; others pursue a negative-list approach, in which exceptions to liberalization are
listed.
Some PTAs are also used for dealing with labour mobility issues, with the inclusion of certain
categories of labour (such as technicians, nurses, and health care workers), in their trade
agreements or have offered an expanded number of categories for service suppliers, combined
with expanded quotas. Other PTAs have eliminated the quotas altogether for certain categories
of services suppliers (usually, professionals). Some South-South regional integration groupings
typical of geographically contiguous countries aim for completely liberalised labour markets
(e.g. in the Caribbean) as part of their agreements.
Government Procurement
Given that the Public Sector tends to be a larger sector in each economy that accounts for a
large share of the domestic product, purchases and services contracted by this agent might
have important effects. As Governments might benefit domestic providers and suppliers and
discriminate against foreign agents; it can be desirable to include provisions that limit the
scope for such discrimination with the objective of creating a level playing field with respect to
the public procurement rules.
This is where multilateral disciplines are the weakest and hence there is scope for WTO plus
but at the same time there is typically strong resistance to include such measure in
agreements. Only about 40 Countries (28 being the EU member states) have signed the WTO’s
rather weak Government Procurement Agreement. Many States resist inclusion in FTAs. EU
Canada opens government procurement markets and includes sub federal jurisdictions. But
Korea-Canada applies at the federal level only. The EU India FTA negotiating agenda covers
government procurement but there are doubts as to how far this will de facto go.
Trade Facilitation
Trade facilitation provisions are relatively more recent and cover a spectrum of policies and
activities which aim to improve the ability of importers and exporters to trade.
Trade Facilitation is associated with the effort to reduce the burden of different types of
measures and disciplines with the objective of reducing the cost of trade associated with
administrative procedures that act as additional barriers to trade. Given than these measures
tend to apply to imported goods, they are considered as trade barriers given their