147th Session of the Trade Committee - Agenda

1.    Adoption of the Agenda

2.    Implementing the Trade Committee’s Medium-term Priorities:

              a) Services Roadmap
              b) Menu of workstreams for the "Advocacy" and "Domestic policy" priorities
              c) Information on export credits work

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2.    Implementing the Trade Committee’s Medium-term Priorities

The Trade Committee will discuss how most effectively focus and deepen its ongoing and future activities on the medium-term priorities discussed at its March 2007 meeting on the basis of papers prepared by the Secretariat.

In considering how to move forward on its medium-term priorities, the Trade Committee will want to take account of relevant past work, which is summarized in documents prepared to this purpose.  In some cases past work may contribute to more rapid progress or may provide orientations for pursuing timely and important activities. In other cases, there may no longer be compelling arguments for continuing some past workstreams, which seem less crucial for a focused work programme even though they had been judged important and enlightening when they were undertaken. These workstreams are thus dropped in the proposals for future work.

Towards a Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI): A Proposal for a Road Map for Future Trade Committee Work on Services

In line with its expressed desire to orient the work towards quantification of services measures, the roadmap sets out a detailed proposal to orient services work towards the design and construction of a services trade restrictiveness index (STRI) for Member countries. The history of past work for the Trade Committee on services appears in the Appendix to this document.

This document is submitted for discussion and guidance by the Committee.

Implementing the Trade Committee's Medium-term Priorities: Menu of Workstreams for the Advocacy and Domestic Policy Priorities

Delegates may wish to comment on whether the workstreams and focus areas proposed by the Secretariat are the right ones for basing follow-up discussions and decisions that would seek agreement on more specific details and would feed into the development of the Trade Committee activities for 2009-2010, which will be begin at the October Trade Committee meeting.

The Trade Committee's Medium-term Priorities: Export Credits

For information, recent and ongoing work relevant for export credits (the fourth priority) is presented under this agenda item. (The future development of these activities will be discussed at the appropriate time in the export credit bodies.)