Liberalisation of Trade in Services under the GATS

During the Uruguay Round, international trade in services for the first time entered the multilateral liberalisation agenda. The talks resulted in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) which has since provided the general multilateral framework for liberalising trade in services. The services sector is also an important part of current negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda. This article first describes the most important developments and stylised facts in the trade in services since 1995. This analysis highlights the impressive growth of financial and other business services driven by innovations in ITC technologies and the related structural shift in other commercial services gaining importance at the cost of transportation and tourism, i.e., the more traditional traded services. Estimates further suggest that most services are traded by the commercial presence mode of delivery. Furthermore, most trade is among industrialised countries, with the EU 15 as the world's largest exporter of services. While high-income countries specialise in business services, the greatest part of the trade in other countries is in tourism.