Sauvé, Pierre; Ward, Natasha --- "Services preferences in Africa: perspectives and challenges" [2014] ELECD 337; in Sauvé, Pierre; Shingal, Anirudh (eds), "The Preferential Liberalization of Trade in Services" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014) 196

Book Title: The Preferential Liberalization of Trade in Services

Editor(s): Sauvé, Pierre; Shingal, Anirudh

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781782548959

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Services preferences in Africa: perspectives and challenges

Author(s): Sauvé, Pierre; Ward, Natasha

Number of pages: 28

Abstract/Description:

This chapter takes stock of the state of play of preferential trade negotiations in services in Africa. It explores the factors that lie behind the reluctance of African governments to bind service sector policy under international treaties. The chapter chronicles several ongoing initiatives aimed at deepening intra-regional trade and investment among the eight regional economic cooperation areas found on the continent. It also describes external liberalization efforts engaging Africa with the rest of the world in services trade, devoting particular attention to negotiations under way with the European Community (EC) with a view to concluding WTO-compatible Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The chapter draws attention to several novel features of the EC-CARIFORUM EPA in the services field and discusses its possible implications for Africa's ongoing processes of integration in services markets at both the intra- and extra-regional levels. The chapter concludes with a broader discussion of a range of policy challenges confronting African governments in designing development-enhancing strategies of engagement in services trade negotiations.The world has witnessed a fevered push towards the preferential liberalization of trade and investment over the past two decades. Since the advent in 1994 of the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (and in a few instances before it), the above push typically extends to trade in services. The focus on services has come in light of increasing recognition both of their rising salience in world trade and investment and, most importantly, of the central influence that an efficient service infrastructure can exert on economy-wide performance. If there was one region of the developing world where a focus on services as a means to lower punitively high trade costs, enhance the efficiency of resource use in upstream and downstream sectors, from extractive industries to agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing and other service sectors, and exploit new sources of comparative advantage, especially in labor-intensive services, it should be Africa. Yet the continent, North and South of the Sahara, has to date (and with few exceptions) largely eschewed negotiated market opening and rule-making in services trade and investment. The African continent is indeed a reluctant latecomer to negotiations aimed at the progressive liberalization of trade and investment in services, a trend that sets it apart from most other regions of the developing world that have long chosen to anchor domestic reform efforts in legally binding commitments under international trade agreements. They have typically done so with a view to affording greater predictability to ongoing reforms and buttressing investment climates.