EUROPEAN RETAILERS FOR FREE TRADE IN SERVICES.

Sep 17, 1987

EUROPEAN RETAILERS FOR FREE TRADE IN SERVICES.

GENEVA, SEPTEMBER 14 (IFDA) – The Foreign Trade Association, representing trade policy interests of European retail trade, called Monday for liberalisation of trade in services, and placing it under the discipline of GATT.

In a statement to coincide with this week’s meeting of the GATT Groups of Negotiations on Services (GNS), the FTA said a code of conduct providing for most-favoured-nation principle and non-discrimination rule should be applied to trade in services.

This, the FTA said, should result in placing such cartels as liner conferences in maritime transport and International Air Transport Association (IATA) in air transport under GATT, so long as they were not actually dissolved.

FTA Director-General Helmut Wienholt and his colleagues in presenting this viewpoint to newsmen, said that as retailers consuming services the FTA had come to the conclusion that liberalisation of trade in services would be to its benefit.

FTA estimated that in the final sales value of goods sold by its members, about 30 percent represented value of the product, 50 percent the value of the enterprise’s "internal services", and 20 percent of external services.