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India tables offers at WTO
December 30, 2003 13:22 IST
India has submitted its offers at the World Trade Organisation to open up various services including health, telecom, engineering, construction, book-keeping and accounting, travel and tourism, maritime and computer-related services.
Services negotiations at the WTO are carried out in form of offers and requests and according to official sources India's offer for these sectors are in various modes of supply.
They, however, said most of the offers cover Mode I and Mode 4 of supply, implying cross-border supply of services and movement of natural persons, respectively.
The offers made can be revised or withdrawn depending on the response received from the trading partners.
India had made limited commitments at the end of Uruguay Round in some sectors like engineering, computer-related, hospital and tourism which have been revised now.
The Cabinet Committee of WTO headed by the Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had approved the broad strategy for services negotiations at the WTO in June this year.
The Cabinet had also made it clear that the government was not willing to negotiate on the opening up of distributive (retail and wholesale), legal, posts and courier and audio-visual services.
However, other services like energy, education, environment, recreation, culture and sports services could be considered for opening up only after undertaking more studies on these sectors.
India, which is emerging as a major global services provider in various sectors, is trying to play a pro-active role in the services negotiations.
The offers, which are to be tabled, have been made in consultation with the concerned ministries, they added.