India should pursue its proposal for a special visa for its professionals – called the GATS visa – to facilitate movement of natural persons in the ongoing negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for liberalisation of world trade in services under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), according to UNCTAD. India’s proposal also addresses the issues of recognition, including facilitating the participation of developing countries in mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) and evolving multilateral norms for such recognition. Articulating UNCTAD’s perspective at the stakeholder consultation workshop which concluded here yesterday, Ms. Lakshmi Puri, Director in the Division of International Trade in Goods and Services and Commodities/UNCTAD, said that this was particularly important as the going was tough in respect of both the modes of services delivery of interest to India i.e., Modes 4 ( movement of natural persons) and 1 ( cross border supply which also covers BPO services ), in the wake of heightened security concerns, political sensitivities and rising job-related protectionist sentiments in the major developed country markets.
The ongoing GATS negotiations both on market access and on rules are important to ensure that the kind of comparative advantage in services that India is currently enjoying in world markets is not restricted and in fact, is further secured and expanded through multilateral commitments in the WTO by its major trading partners. This is specially true in the case of Mode 1 and Mode 4 where markets and global enterprises demand and use Indian services and service providers and are way ahead of inter-governmental, multilateral and even bilateral commitments. “ Indian services providers have become indispensable through the rapid growth of the ’24-hour knowledge factories’ leading to efficiency and welfare gains for the world economy”, UNCTAD says.
There is much at stake for India in the world services regime becoming more open, predictable, rule-based and equitable. The sectors of export interest to India on which it has made requests to its trading partners in the WTO include business services (mainly computer-related services, engineering services, medical and dental and R& D services), telecoms, tourism, health and social services.
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(Release ID :11117)