Facilitating Trade in Services

In 2016, the Government of India proposed negotiations on an agreement to facilitate trade in services to complement the 2013 WTO agreement on facilitation of trade in goods. The proposal did not find much support, but plurilateral talks launched at the 2017 WTO ministerial conference in Buenos Aires encompass policy areas that are very relevant from a services trade facilitation perspective. This paper argues that participating in the current plurilateral talks can do much to achieve services trade facilitation objectives by identifying good regulatory practices. Although elements relevant to services trade facilitation are on the table in the WTO, there are important gaps. Identifying priorities for complementary international cooperation to facilitate trade in services on a plurilateral basis requires initiatives that bring together governments, services industry associations and sectoral regulators.


Policy Research Working Paper 9228
In 2016, the Government of India proposed negotiations on an agreement to facilitate trade in services to complement the 2013 World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement in goods. The proposal did not find much support, but plurilateral talks launched in 2017 on various policy areas encompass areas that are very relevant from a services trade facilitation perspective. This paper argues that participating in the current plurilateral talks can do much to achieve services trade facilitation objectives by identifying good regulatory practices. Although elements relevant to services trade facilitation are on the table in the World Trade Organization, there are important gaps. Identifying priorities for complementary international cooperation to facilitate trade in services on a plurilateral basis requires initiatives that bring together governments, services industry associations, and sectoral regulators. This paper is a product of the Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Global Practice. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The author may be contacted at igillson@worldbank.org or ssaez@worldbank.org.

Introduction
There is now broad recognition of the potential benefits of facilitating cross-border trade flows by reducing the incidence of "red tape" associated with the implementation of domestic tax and regulatory policies. This recognition is informed by a plethora of academic research, supported by business surveys, documenting that the associated costs are often a multiple of import tariffs that apply to goods without generating similar benefits for the economy in the form of government revenue. 1 The associated costs reflect a combination of the real resources that must be allocated by firms to satisfy administrative requirements and the uncertainty and unpredictability that often are associated with border clearance processes. Many of the provisions of the GATT are aimed at facilitating trade in the sense of reducing such costs. Examples include publication and related transparency requirements and substantive rules regarding how trade policies should be implemented -e.g., relating to the classification and valuation of products for purposes of collecting import duties or the permitted basis for charging additional fees and charges. The 2013 WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) builds on extant GATT rules to define in much greater detail a series of good practices that all WTO members agreed should be implemented to further facilitate trade in goods (see Hoekman, 2016).
The TFA applies only to goods, not to services. In most countries, services account for 55-75% or more of total output and employment. For the world as a whole, the role of services has been increasing rapidly, reflecting a mix of technological changes and rising average per capita incomes. Efficient services are ever more critical for economic development, in part because many services are inputs into the production of other services and goods and thus the cost, quality and variety of services determine the competitiveness of firms and impact on overall economic growth. Although services account for the majority of economic activity in most economies, the share of services output that is traded is much less than for goods. However, technological changes are making services increasingly tradable. Many services that were not tradable in the past can now be provided cross-border at arms-length using the internet and telecommunications networks (Gervais and Jensen, 2019). 2 Although cross-border trade in services has been growing rapidly -epitomized by the offshoring of business process services -in many cases suppliers or customers still need to physically move to the location of the other to allow service provision to occur. Here too a mix of technological advances and policy reforms have supported greater international exchange. Falling costs of air transportation and shifts towards use of international supply 1 See for example Moïsé and Sorescu (2013).
2 WTO (2019) provides an in-depth overview and discussion of trade in services.
3 chains have led to increasing flows of temporary cross-border movement of persons providing different types of services. While developments in digitization and business process outsourcing and offshoring attract much attention in the popular press, in practice trade in services frequently requires the crossborder movement of services suppliers, both temporary and longer-term in the form of establishment of a commercial presence in a market.

Sources of services trade costs
Reducing services trade costs is an important dimension of the challenge of increasing economy-wide productivity and per capita incomes. Because many services are inputs into production of goods and other services, if input costs are higher than they would be in an environment where services trade costs were lower, this will act as a tax on domestic industries and reduce their competitiveness. The stylized fact here is that trade costs for services are much higher than trade costs for goods. Figure 1 reports estimates of the ad valorem tariff equivalent of international trade costs for different services sectors.
As can be seen, costs differ substantially across sectors, with transport confronting the lowest trade costs on average and construction the highest. For most sectors, trade costs have not declined substantially since the mid-1990s. The result is to reduce the volume of trade in services, and thus to reduce the access firms and households have to low-cost services.
Trade costs are high in part because of the characteristics of services: trade often requires movement of people and/or establishment of a commercial presence (FDI). This implies that many policies and their administration may impact on trade costs. Two dimensions are important in this regard: (i) regulatory policies that apply to all firms, both national and foreign; and (ii) policies that are designed to discriminate against foreign providers or consumption abroad. Policy is a major determinant of the costs incurred by service suppliers to contest foreign markets. In some cases, policy simply prohibits foreign sourcing, in others measures greatly reduce the scope for trade to occur -e.g., through the application of economic needs tests or quotas applying to foreign services suppliers. Whatever the policy stance of a government and the regulatory measures that condition access to a market by foreign suppliers, there will be procedural and administrative requirements that must be satisfied. As is true for procedures that apply to goods crossing borders, there will be costs for services providers in complying with regulatory policies. These costs go beyond fees and charges for documents or certification and conformity assessment and the time needed to do so. Costs will also arise if there is inadequate information and transparency regarding the applicable measures and uncertainty whether services provision will be authorized.

Figure 1: Estimated trade costs for services
Source: Miroudot and Shepherd, 2016. Regulatory policies vary across countries for any given sector and the resulting heterogeneity is an important source of international trade costs (Nordas, 2016;Miroudot and Shepherd, 2016;OECD, 2017;WTO, 2019). As illustrated in Figure 2, the problem for firms is that they must address a set of idiosyncratic regulatory requirements in each market they wish to contest. The associated costs for each market increase overall production costs at the level of the firm and prevent them from capturing economies of scale or scope. There are several dimensions relevant here: (i) (asymmetric) information on the applicable rules and requirements; (ii) the associated certification/conformity assessment processes; and (iii) uncertainty/variability in administration of (i) and (ii). These factors generate trade costs even if regulation is applied on a nondiscriminatory basis.  1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Figure 2: Impact of regulatory heterogeneity on firm-level average costs
Source: Kox and Lejour (2005) High services trade costs in part reflect regulatory policies that may discriminate against foreign providers. Examples include nationality requirements or banning access to markets, as is the case in many countries for segments of the transport, communications or professional services sectors.
Research has shown that barriers to trade and investment in services are often much higher than for goods (Jafari and Tarr, 2017). Although information on services trade policy is limited, new data sets have been developed recently that characterize the restrictiveness of services trade and investment policies (Borchert, Gootiiz, and Mattoo 2014;WTO, 2019). The World Bank's Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) reveals that barriers to trade in services in the late 2000s were substantial   Research has mostly focused on the effects of services trade policies and domestic regulatory measures -see e.g., Mustilli and Pelkmans (2013). There is limited analysis of the extent to which administrative procedures and compliance costs are a factor, and thus not much of a basis on which to determine the reducing the level of discriminatory policy barriers that apply to non-nationals.

Some lessons from the TFA negotiation experience
The primary focus of trade facilitation efforts to date has been on actions to lower the costs of clearing customs and moving physical goods across borders. Many such measures are included in the WTO TFA. 4 These include provisions pertaining to ensuring transparency via publication of information (requirements to publish regulations on trade procedures, taxes, fees, etc. and use of e-portals and websites) and creation of national enquiry points to provide traders with information on applicable regulatory requirements. The TFA calls for providing traders and trading partners with the opportunity to comment on proposed new regulations relating to movement, release, clearance etc. of goods and mechanisms to request advance rulings on a timely basis regarding tariff classification and origin criteria.
There are also provisions to permit appeal and review of decisions on Customs matters and other border management agencies relating to release and clearance of goods. The agreement embodies many good 9 practices, including pre-arrival processing of consignments, separation of release of goods from final determination of payment liability, use of risk management systems and post-clearance audits; facilitation of "authorized operators" with a track record of compliance; consideration of so-called "Single Window" systems; and cooperation between customs agencies to exchange information on consignments.
As this brief summary suggests, the specific provisions of the TFA are often quite detailed and technical, reflecting extensive analytical work and deliberation in the international Customs community that led to a common understanding of areas where improvement was needed and what constitutes good practice. was completed in 1999. This comprised a set of principles and detailed annexes that lay out standards and recommended best practices for customs procedures and related administrative practices, including risk assessment, electronic data interchange, use of ex-post, audit-based systems of control, import and export procedures, transit arrangements, and bonded warehousing.
Extensive diagnostic work and projects undertaken by international development banks, the ITC and UN bodies (UNCTAD and the UN Regional Economic Commissions) complemented work in the WCO context.
The international development organizations had wide-ranging experience in the design and implementation of trade facilitation projects. An important contribution of the epistemic community that existed on issues associated with trade facilitation was to provide objective professional expertise and advice on good practices and areas in which cooperation would benefit everyone. Broad agreement among experts on what constituted good practice in the enforcement of customs law and regulation greatly facilitated the conclusion of the TFA negotiations (Hoekman, 2016). The work of regional and multilateral organizations played an important role in helping to inform the consensus that emerged regarding good practices. It also helped to generate information on the "gap" between the status quo prevailing in developing countries on customs and transit policies and the various good practices that were the main focus of TFA talks. 5 The creation of an "epistemic community" of practitioners and stakeholders was a major factor in the success of the negotiations in helping to create a common understanding of what the issues were and why they mattered, as well as what constitutes good practices in reducing compliance costs for traders without undermining the realization of underlying regulatory objectives.
A unique feature of the TFA is how it addresses differences in implementation capacity, preferences and national priorities. Although the TFA applies to all WTO members, individual developing country governments defined for themselves when they would implement specific provisions, distinguishing between those commitments that simply require more time to implement and those where implementation is made conditional on the provision of technical assistance from high-income members and the international community. This innovative approach towards operationalizing special and differential treatment allowed the TFA to become a multilateral WTO agreement that applies to all members. Thus, the rules apply in principle to all countries, but each (developing) country defines for itself when specific provisions will be implemented and whether this is conditional on receiving assistance. If this is requested and not provided, the associated provisions of the TFA -insofar as they are binding as opposed to best-endeavor commitments -cannot be enforced through the WTO dispute settlement mechanism.

Facilitating trade in services: The 2016 Government of India WTO proposal
As mentioned, the TFA pertains to goods only. In 2016, the Government of India put forward a proposal that the WTO membership consider an analogous initiative on Trade Facilitation in Services (TFS). A succinct concept paper (Government of India, 2016a) submitted to the WTO Working Party on Domestic Regulation was followed by a more fleshed out proposal that discusses several proposed elements of a TFS agenda (Government of India, 2016b). India's motivation for the proposal was to complement the TFA, which only pertains to Customs-related procedures and processes applied when goods cross borders. The basic idea was to launch a process to explore and agree on measures to facilitate trade in services, with a focus on enhancing transparency, streamlining procedures, and removing redundant red tape and bottlenecks associated with the administration of regulatory policies that apply to services trade. A premise of the proposal was to take existing trade-restrictive and domestic regulatory measures as given. The aim was not to consider the substance of domestic regulation or to seek to lower explicit barriers to trade in services, but to reduce the costs of regulatory heterogeneity and the processes associated with implementation of services trade policies through actions to lower administrative costs: i.e., to facilitate trade.
The Indian proposal suggested a TFS initiative to cover policy measures pertaining to all four modes of supply as well as the implementation of sector-or mode-specific policies. 6 It also foresaw inclusion of special and differential treatment (SDT) provisions for developing economies, building on the precedent established by the TFA. Subjects suggested for discussion included potential rules relating to taxes, fees, and other charges on services supply or suppliers; putting in place mechanisms to allow WTO members to comment on proposed new regulatory measures pertaining to trade in services; measures to enhance access to information on applicable regulation, including through electronic means, and more generally to increase the transparency of the application of services trade-related policies; and domestic reviewtype mechanisms to provide opportunities for suppliers to raise issues related to the administration of measures and the pursuit of regulatory cooperation by the authorities.
The areas suggested for discussion and possible disciplines and/or cooperation are all relevant from a TFS perspective. Although the likely economic impact will depend on the level of prevailing trade barriers, for modes and sectors with cumbersome regulation, trade facilitation measures can have a direct positive effect on foreign suppliers. The deliberations that informed the process of operationalizing the WTO services waiver (permitting granting of preferences to LDCs) illustrated that a key constraint for LDC suppliers is visa and related documentary requirements to be able to enter a country -whether to search for services sales (export) opportunities or to provide services. Mode 4 trade tends to be highly restricted (see e.g., Chanda, 2009; and compliance with administrative requirements costly, especially for small firms. Visa fees are often very high relative to average per capita incomes of source countries, and there is frequently great uncertainty whether the investment of 12 time and money will result in obtaining a visa, making it more difficult than necessary for developing country services providers to export (Drake-Brockman et al. 2016).

Post-2017 developments: From multilateral to plurilateral initiatives
India 8 The WTO permits preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that cover substantially all trade of signatories and do not increase external rates of protection. In addition to discriminatory PTAs, the WTO permits members to negotiate so-called critical mass agreements where benefits or outcomes apply to both participants and non-members and Plurilateral Agreements that apply only to signatories and where benefits are extended only to participating countries. The latter must be approved by all WTO members. Insofar as the Buenos Aires joint initiative talks result in agreements that are applied on a nondiscriminatory basis by signatories, they will add to existing critical mass agreements such as the Information Technology Agreement. See Hoekman and Mavroidis (2015; for indepth discussion of plurilateral cooperation options under the WTO. 13 The E-commerce talks span 77 WTO Members and focus on (i) restrictive policies and (ii) digital trade facilitation. 9 Rules on digital trade restrictions policies will be difficult to agree given differences between the European Union, China and the United States on issues such as data privacy, the necessary regulatory conditions that must be satisfied for freedom of cross-border data flows, or the need for data localization requirements. Agreement is more likely to be feasible on provisions to facilitate digital trade: e.g., use of electronic signatures, e-invoicing; facilitating electronic payment for cross-border transactions; policy transparency or measures in the area of consumer protection (e.g., relating to fraud).
Domestic regulation talks involve 56 WTO Members and center on matters associated with authorization and certification of foreign services providers (licensing, qualification, and technical standards), not on the substance of regulations. While some WTO members would prefer to include substantive commitments that reduce the trade-impeding effects of domestic regulation, such as a "necessity test" or language calling for countries to adopt regulations that minimize trade restrictive effects ("least trade restrictiveness" language), the experience of previous efforts in the WTO to get agreement on such principles -which are included in some WTO agreements pertaining to regulation of tangible products -suggests that talks will focus on trade facilitation: publication and availability of information; enquiry points; timeframes for processing of applications; acceptance of electronic applications and basic principles: e.g., transparency of regulations; objective criteria; reasonable fees; and ensuring that authorizing bodies are independent and/or impartial and decisions can be appealed. The joint statement initiatives and the parallel plurilateral discussions on domestic regulation of services imply that at least in part the TFS agenda is being taken forward in the WTO by groups of participating WTO members. Taken together, if successful, the resulting plurilateral initiatives will facilitate trade in services. There is also scope for the talks on enhancing the ability of MSMEs to trade to result in measures that facilitate trade by assisting the ability of services MSMEs to sell their products across borders. Whether this will be the case is not known, given that talks are ongoing, but there is nothing preventing participants from putting forward proposals for initiatives that will do so. This leads to two questions. First, to what extent will what emerges from the different groups benefit nonparticipating countries? Second, how much of a facilitating trade in services agenda will be embedded in the joint statement initiatives?
The answer to the first question depends in part on whether the results of the initiatives are applied on a nondiscriminatory basis and in part on what nonmembers do. It is likely that the trade facilitating dimensions of any new plurilateral agreements will be extended to all countries, given that the policies involved are regulatory in nature and thus apply to all firms, whatever their origin. If so, their plurilateral nature will not come at the cost of nonparticipants. Nevertheless, the commitments that are negotiated and agreements on what constitutes good regulatory practice will be determined by those countries that engage in the talks. The absence of most developing countries from the table may result in matters of interest or concern from a development perspective not being addressed by the groups. Although nonparticipating countries will retain policy space, including the freedom to join a group subsequently or to unilaterally implement whatever is agreed by a group, there may be a significant opportunity cost associated with decisions not to engage in these plurilateral processes. This is directly relevant to the 15 second question: what will the groups do to push forward a services trade facilitation agenda -and what more might they do? Centre (Geneva) can assist countries to put in place such systems for services providers and in the process help stakeholders to provide information needed to establish baseline trade facilitation performance metrics and monitor progress over time in facilitating trade in services.

Quality of regulation and regulatory heterogeneity. A major element of facilitating trade in services is
to enhance the quality of regulation and related institutions, and to reduce the costs for firms that are created by differences in regulatory requirements for a given service across jurisdictions. Transparency will help do so to some extent by clarifying what is required in each jurisdiction but will not reduce market-specific compliance and certification-related costs. Such costs may additionally be influenced by regulations affecting access and use of goods needed for the provision of services that differ across countries. Reducing the costs of regulatory heterogeneity calls for proactive efforts by governments to cooperate. As noted, this need not extend to liberalization in the sense of pursuit by governments of 'deregulation' by trading partners and thus continues to fall under the umbrella of 'facilitation'.
Such facilitation can be pursued through various channels. Governments can pursue different types of regulatory cooperation efforts, ranging from sector-specific initiatives such as mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) to cross-sectoral, horizontal efforts that center on basic 'good practice' principles such as consultations with stakeholders and use of impact assessments to learn from (international) experience and more formal mechanisms to converge over time on the substance of new regulatory norms (harmonization and international standardization). All these types of cooperation can reduce compliance costs for firms but also enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of regulation.
Regulatory cooperation can be characterized along a spectrum from "soft" to "hard" depending on how binding (enforceable) any commitments are. Efforts to increase coherence across regulatory regimes are an example of "soft" cooperation. They have been a central element of international initiatives on regulation pursued in the OECD and APEC, which focus on principles and processes as opposed to the substance of regulation. An example would be to agree to inform partners about new regulatory initiatives, or to create processes through which parties consult each other and provide opportunities for comment before adopting new regulations. Whether or not a country implements the principles or good practices will not have a direct effect on the realization of regulatory goals in another nation.
The GATS includes a provision on domestic regulation but nonetheless has fewer disciplines for regulations affecting services than pertain for goods (product regulation). Article VI.4 of GATS calls on the Council for Trade in Services to develop any necessary disciplines to ensure that measures relating to qualification requirements and procedures, technical standards and licensing requirements do not constitute unnecessary barriers to trade in services, and Members may not apply regulatory requirements so as to nullify or impair specific commitments made for sectors/modes (Article VI.5(a)).
The GATS has no obligation to use international standards if these exist -WTO Members may use whatever standards they wish. 18

GATS
The WTO does little at present to support regulatory cooperation on a multilateral basis; the focus has been on national policies. A feature of the GATT agreements on product market regulation -the agreements on technical barriers to trade (TBT) and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures is that these go beyond the basic national treatment (nondiscrimination) requirement for product regulations to call for measures to be science-based and incorporate risk assessment principles. Moreover, both agreements encourage the use of international standards where these exist. In the SPS area such standards are set by the Food and Agriculture Organization's Codex Alimentarius Commission. For industrial products there are a plethora of international bodies that are fora in which international standards are set. There is much less in the way of international standards for services (Hoekman and Mavroidis, 2016).
An illustration of this is that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) issues very few standards for services activities. Most of its services standards are limited to "back end" infrastructure.
There is very little in the way of substantive standards pertaining to service provision and suppliers: fewer than 2% of ISO standards deal with services (Weissinger, 2019). Stimulating demand for international standards for specific services activities could be one avenue to facilitate services trade over time. The ISO is demand-driven -it does not pursue standardization unless this is demanded by stakeholders. Such demand may increase if it is encouraged through a WTO agreement on domestic services regulation and/or on e-commerce in which signatories agree to cooperate in setting international standards as a means to facilitate services trade. The ISO modus operandi is very open and multilateral in nature, with any interested country being able to participate -providing a channel for countries that have decided not to join the WTO plurilateral talks to nonetheless engage in efforts to facilitate trade in services.
The focus of domestic regulation discussions is horizontal, on 'good regulatory practices' in general as opposed to being sector-or activity-specific. This provides a potential opportunity for subsets of countries to pursue sectoral plurilateral agreements to complement the WTO domestic regulation being -or cannot be -addressed through these groups.

Filling the TFS gaps: A role for the G20?
In their 2015 meeting in Antalya, G20 leaders called on their trade ministers to meet on a regular basis and to create a G20 Trade and Investment Working Group (TIWG). The TIWG provides a forum for coordination and cooperation across the organizations, and for G20 members to tap into their expertise and resources. The TIWG includes representatives of the OECD, UNCTAD, the World Bank as well as the WTO. As a result, it has acted as a coordination device to support collaboration between international organizations active in trade and investment related areas. Activities of the TIWG have centered on the importance of reducing trade costs for the operation and design of global value chains (GVCs) and on policies for enhancing participation of developing countries and MSMEs in international production networks. A specific area addressed by the TIWG during 2015-2017 was investment facilitation, a subject that spans work programs in all the organizations involved in the group and that was not covered by WTO rules or the Doha Round negotiations. TIWG deliberations helped prepare the ground 20 for the launch of plurilateral discussions on e-commerce, MSMEs and investment facilitation in the WTO, illustrating that the G20 has been able to influence the launch of initiatives on subjects that could not be addressed on a multilateral basis in the WTO.
From a TFS perspective, efforts in the G20 (TIWG) could focus on two areas. Aside from fostering broader-based participation in current plurilateral negotiations-cum-deliberations, a second priority from a systemic services trade facilitation perspective is to identify how the different agendas of the various joint initiative groups connect to each other and determine major gaps that are economically significant from the viewpoint of TFS. Some of these gaps are clear and well known-e.g., the cost of administrative procedures pertaining to service suppliers that affect their ability to explore market opportunities or provide services. This calls for analysis of policies and regulatory requirements that give rise to significant transaction costs for foreign suppliers and determining whether these arecould be -on the table in the plurilateral initiatives and where complementary activities could help make a difference.
Focusing on enhancing policy coherence -filling gaps and preventing redundancies and overlaps in rulemaking efforts -and tackling the issue of how the WTO deals with economic development differentials are two possible areas where the G20 could play a useful role in supporting multilateral cooperation and the trading system. (2019)  imply is a shift in focus to these countries negotiating specific provisions that reflect their interests and circumstances-something that OECD member countries also do. This is very much a subject for the G20

Coherence. Echandi and Sauve
given that the key countries are all G20 members and, except for Brazil, have vigorously opposed efforts to revisit the principle of SDT.

Conclusion
The 2016 Indian TFS proposal aimed at establishment of a new WTO agreement along the lines of the TFA. This would be universal, apply to all WTO members, and, as in the TFA, leave implementation flexible for developing countries and make available technical assistance for implementation. This vision may materialize at some point, but since 2017 negotiating energy is being put into plurilateral talks. For the time being, plurilateral cooperation is the most that is feasible. An implication is that supporters of efforts to complement the WTO TFA with analogous instruments to facilitate trade in services need to ensure that the various plurilateral initiatives include as much as possible a focus on matters that are relevant from a TFS perspective, and to push that eventual agreements apply on a nondiscriminatory basis and are open to all WTO members. A common feature of all four policy areas being discussed under WTO auspices is that they cover much of the TFS agenda. Participating in the plurilateral talks is therefore the most direct means of pursuing TFS objectives. Not doing so implies not being able to influence the content and outcome of whatever may be agreed.
A major advantage of the current open plurilateral (club) approach to negotiations as opposed to the consensus-based TFA model is that a critical mass of likeminded countries can move forward. In the case 23 of services, if clubs agree to a set of good regulatory practices that will help to facilitate trade in services, this can be implemented on an MFN basis by club members scheduling whatever has been agreed as additional commitments under Art. XVIII GATS, a provision that reflected the recognition by the drafters of the GATS that clubs were likely going to be a feature of multilateral cooperation on services trade (Hoekman and Mavroidis, 2017). If club members agree certain procedures make sense to implementthat is, constitute good regulatory practices -then there is no rationale to discriminate in the application of TFS measures. While this may be the case, it is also true that the participating countries will determine the content of any agreements that emerge from discussions. Matters of interest to nonparticipants may not be addressed.
Although elements of the TFS agenda are being purposed in the plurilateral initiatives, what is on the