Analytical Note, May 2003

Checklist of Questions for the Analysis of Initial Offers.

This note focuses on the analysis of initial offers for specific commitments that Members have started submitting since March 2003 in the context of the current services negotiations. Indeed, in order to facilitate and streamline the analysis of the initial offers it may be useful to identify several key questions that can be used as a guide in the analysis of offers.

The questions that have been identified try to provide an analysis of offers that is useful to all developing country WTO Members, irrespective of whether they have already submitted their requests and/or their offers or not. Indeed, a country which has already submitted a request to the offering country can check whether the offer of its trading partners answers its expectations. A country which has not yet submitted its request but is in the process of doing so can also assess whether its trading partners has sufficiently offered or whether the country should ask them to improve their initial offers in the requests it formulates.

The questions could be categorised in several main groups (so far 3 have been identified: factual questions, analytical questions, and questions relating to the value of the offers for individual Members). Some questions may not be relevant to a specific offer but wherever possible the following checklist of questions could be used. Under the heading other issues that need to beaddressed are listed a couple of elements that may need to be developed in the analysis of the offers.

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