10:41 AM Jan 31, 1997
TELECOM TALKS DEPEND ON US ASSESSMENTS
Geneva 31 Jan (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The fate of the talks at the World Trade Organization for liberalizing basic telecommunication services seemed to be hanging on the 'subjective judgement' of the United States whether the package available would be enough to warrant its joining a multilateral agreement in this area. Without the United States, WTO officials and negotiators agree there will be no agreement. The United States has repeatedly made clear that it would need a "critical mass" of liberalisation offers to be able to join any accord. While western media coverage and comments of trade officials have projected offers from the 'emerging economies' and Asian economies as the key, there were indications Friday that "offers" from Canada and Mexico, the two Nafta partners of the US, may not be viewed by the US as sufficient and could pose problems. The Canadian offer reportedly limits foreign ownership to 47.3% equity, and Canada is said to have explained that it has political problems in increasing the equity limitations. Within the WTO, Canada (with the EC) has been at the forefront of the drive to have investment rules written into the WTO so that foreign investors would have full rights of investment without any equity or other limitations, except on narrow security considerations. The United States has been pushing for a "very high quality" investment agreement within the OECD. The Canadian position on foreign equity ownership in the telecom sector, if correct, would prove doubly embarrassing to Canada and the WTO leadership that has been pushing the investment rules on developing countries. The US, some of the participants in the telecom talks say, would find problems at home if the Canadian stipulations remain. Trade officials expect bilateral talks next week, with high level participation, to iron out differences. The Group on Basic Telecommunications (GBT), which is chaired by UK official Neil McMillan, after a meeting where it received some more new and some revised offers, and heard some promises, is to meet again on 10 February, with high level participation. The deadline set for the negotiations is 15 February. McMillan said that the GBT would also be meeting from 13 February to complete the talks and conclude an agreement by the deadline. McMillan, who has been chairing this, and the earlier talks, provided new language to sum up the progress: "not a bad harvest", "very encouraging", and "encouraging movement from people". He however conceded that everything depended on how the US assesses the total content of the package -- the number of participants who have made offers of liberalisation commitments and whether this would be sufficient to 'sell' any agreement domestically. Obviously at the end of the day, everyone has to take a decision on whether they can sell the agreement to their constituents, he added. At today's meeting Bulgaria, El Salvador, Indonesia, Romania and South Africa submitted offers (as also Bolivia which had earlier indicated it would do so. Bangladesh and Malaysia announced their intention to submit an offer. Malaysia has so far resisted pressures on it to table offers. Those who have earlier promised offers are Barbados, Egypt, Ghana and Jamaica. The last two confirmed they would submit their offers next week. Australia, Czech Republic, Mexico, Poland and Singapore were among those who have submitted revised offers. Japan, Israel, New Zealand, Peru,. Pakistan and Thailand, according to McMillan have promised revised offers next week Apart from the offers and revisions, the GBT discussed Friday the question of allocation of radio spectrum by national authorities to individual operators and, given the limited availability of such spectrum, whether the limitations have to be spelt out in country schedules or would be considered implicit. After discussions, the general view is emerging that the allocation of radio frequencies would continue to be more or less as now, and that there would be no need to spell out the limitations in the schedule. On audio-visual issue, the EC presented a formulation (on which it was not seeking a consensus) drawing a distinction between transmission of audio-visual services as a telecommunications transport and the provision of the service by broadcast to consumers. The EC has said that its formulation explained how it viewed its own offer, and that its offer did not involve any commitments on audio-visual services.