In January 2000, WTO Member Governments commenced a new round of negotiations on trade in agriculture and services (including maritime) on the basis of an earlier GATS mandate which committed member governments to undertake those negotiations no later than 2000,. In March 2001 the Council on Services fulfilled a key element in the negotiating mandate by establishing the negotiating guidelines and procedures. The negotiations on services were already almost two years old when they were incorporated into the new Doha Agenda established by the Doha Ministerial Conference in November 2001, but little actual progress had been made.
In a effort to avoid a repetition of the unsuccessful negotiations undertaken as part of the Uruguay Round, the Maritime Transport Committee has over the last few years laid the basis for a more pragmatic, shipping-oriented approach by widely promoting further liberalisation in Maritime Transport Services.
The OECD Secretariat has assisted the Committee in these efforts by also preparing a number of papers and analyses to provide a sound and consistent negotiating basis for its members. These included:
Information on basic WTO terminology applicable to Maritime Transport Services.
Analyses of issues raised in earlier negotiations during the Uruguay Round and Negotiation Group on Maritime Transport Services.
Examination of possible ways of including elements of multimodal transport into the schedules for Maritime Transport Services, covering:
general economic significance of multimodal transport.
the specific importance of multimodal transport to carriers.
Examination of a range of restrictive practices that exist in maritime transport.
Prepared a number of country profiles covering:
Shipping policies and trade data.
List of restrictive practices.
List of possible items that could form part of requests to that country.
The intention of these items is not to dictate to MTC Member countries what should, or should not, be in their requests and offers, but to provide them with a menu from which they could choose those elements that best meet their needs.
The Declaration of the Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference held in Doha, Qatar, on 9-13 November 2001 provides the mandate for the negotiations on maritime transport services. The Doha Declaration endorses the work already done, reaffirms the negotiating guidelines and procedures, and establishes some key elements of the timetable including, most importantly, the deadline of 1 January 2005 for the conclusion of the negotiations as part of a single undertaking.
The negotiations will almost certainly take place in the Trade Negotiations Committee and its subsidiaries. Contrary to the previous round, it is unlikely that separate negotiations for individual sectors will be established, although a final decision has not yet been taken. Negotiations on maritime services therefore will follow the same calendar as other sectors, that is:
An exchange of requests will be made through June 2002.
An exchange of offers will take place through March 2003
AWTO Ministerial Conference will take place in December 2003 as a form of mid-term review; and
The Doha round to be completed by January 2005.
At the time of writing (April 2002) there were eight negotiating proposals on the table for the maritime sector and two related proposals (on freight forwarding and logistics). However, given that there are about a hundred proposals before the WTO, it appears that relatively little time will be devoted to the discussion of individual proposals.
Discussion of maritime services at WTO meetings have shown countries moving in favour of the re-opening of the previous offers as provided in the Council for Trade in Services decision of 28 June 1996. Also, that negotiations should be resumed on the basis of the three-pillar model developed by the NGMTS, which included maritime transport services, maritime auxiliary services and port services, with the addition of multimodal transport related to the maritime sector.
