India may submit revised offers in services to WTO next month

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New Delhi, June 29: India is likely to submit its revised offers in services to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) next month. The commerce ministry hopes to finalise the Cabinet note on the revised offers, which will be a watered down version of the original note prepared in May, by the week-end. The note will be put up for Cabinet approval next week.

Speaking to FE, commerce ministry officials said that the ministry had almost finished working on the Cabinet note for revised services offers and was hoping to submit it to the Cabinet by the end of this week. “If things go as planned, the note will get Cabinet approval next week and we will be in a position to submit the revised offer to the WTO some time later in the month,” a ministry official said.

Officials said that India will not offer much in Mode 3 (establishment of commercial presence) or Mode 1 (cross-border trade in services) as it was disappointed with the US and the EU revised offers in services which had nothing significant in Mode 4 (cross-border movement of personnel), which is India’s primary area of interest.

Interestingly, India was prepared to be quite generous in its revised offers had the EU and the US had shown some sensitivity while framing Mode 4 offers.

The original Cabinet note prepared by the commerce ministry in May (before the EU and the US made their submissions) included a number of offers in Mode 1 and Mode 3 in sectors including insurance, banking, accounting and telecom.

In insurance, the Cabinet-note advised that FDI commitments could be taken up to 26% while in banking it suggested that the increase in the limit on licenses per year for existing and foreign bank branches to 20.

In accounting and book-keeping, apart from allowing up to 26% FDI, the note had also proposed to include non-statutory auditing in the commitments.