World Trade Organization’s new global rules facilitating and simplifying trade in services came into force Tuesday.
The new rules apply to a large and diverse group of WTO Members, including developed, developing and least developed countries – representing 92 percent of world trade in services.
The set of rules agreed in the Joint Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation will streamline authorization requirements and ease procedural hurdles faced by businesses around the globe, in particular micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
It is estimated that this agreement will help reduce the costs of global services trade by more than $120 billion every year, by ensuring transparency, efficiency and predictability of authorization and qualification requirements and procedures.
The clear rules on authorization agreed as part of this Joint Initiative will facilitate trade in services significantly. Especially for MSMEs and women entrepreneurs who typically do not have the same resources to cope with complex requirements they need to comply with to operate in foreign markets.
Sectors such as telecommunications, computer services, engineering, and banking stand to benefit from the new rules. It is also the first time a WTO text includes a binding provision on non-discrimination between men and women.
71 WTO members, including the EU, now apply the new rules.
The new rules will benefit service suppliers from any WTO member, based on the so-called most favoured nation principle.
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