Analytical Note, June 2005

Checklist of Questions for the Analysis of Revised Offers.

As the May deadline has passed, Members are in the process of submitting their revised offers within the context of current GATS negotiations. At the time of writing this note, the US, Canada, EC and Australia had submitted their revised offers.

During the early phase of submission of initial offers, South Centre had previously prepared a Checklist of Questions for the Analysis of Initial Offers (SC/TADP/AN/SV/2) to assist developing countries in assessing what was being offered and how meaningful the commitments were.

For this phase of revised offers in the negotiations, whilst some of the checklist questions will remain relevant, analysis of revised offers will require slightly different questions in order to gauge what is being offered (building on the initial offer) and assessing the value and implications of such commitments.

Therefore, the main purpose of the questions is to enable developing countries to ascertain what has changed from the initial offer to the revised offer under horizontal commitments and specific sub-sectors and modes; identify the type of change being offered (ie. improvement of an existing commitment or addition of a new sub-sector or mode and the nature of that commitment or technical refinement); specifically assess whether new or improved commitments are being offered in mode 4; identify whether additional newclassifications are being used; assess whether the revised offer presents additional liberalisation commitments; assess whether the revised offer constitutes a meaningful improvement from the initial offer based on whether additional sectors have been committed; whether commitments are deeper; and whether commitments are in sub-sectors and modes of interest to developing countries, thereby taking into account development aspects as specified in Article IV of the GATS.

As before, the questions remain categorized in three main groups: factual, analytical and individual members specific. Under ‘other issues to take into account’, these include the need to take into consideration other relevant elements to the revised offer process, such as rules and MFN exemptions and what implications they may have for commitments.

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