SECURITIES COMMISSION OF THE BAHAMAS

PRESS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RE:   CHAIRMAN OF FTAA SERVICES GROUP REPORTS TO CIVIL SOCIETY FORUM IN EL SALVADOR

July 11, 2003

Hillary Deveaux, Acting Executive Director of the Securities Commission and Chairman of the FTAA Negotiating Group on Services, addressed a civil society forum in San Salvador, El Salvador on Monday, July 7, 2003 on the status of the negotiations in services in the FTAA.

Mr. Deveaux, who is attending the Fourteenth Meeting of the FTAA Trade Negotiating Committee in San Salvador, identified in his report several issues that were frustrating progress in the services negotiations, namely:

1.    All countries had not presented initial market access offers for services;

2.  Most of the offers presented were not comprehensive and some only provided for coverage at the federal level of government;

3.   Countries are allowed to present market access offers using either a negative list or a positive list modality; and

4.   The lack of consensus as to whether investments in services should be covered in the Services Negotiating Group or in the Investment Negotiating Group.

Mr. Deveaux explained that some countries had not presented offers because of technical or political reasons. This, coupled with the use of different modalities and the lack of comprehensiveness of the offers, made it difficult to compare offers that were submitted.  He further explained that the use of different negotiating modalities may be contributing to the large number of brackets in the services text as countries that support one modality would support words or phrases in the text that connotate the use of that modality. He advised that text that is tabled by countries, but not agreed to by all participating countries, remains in the chapter, but is bracketed.

He said that a special joint meeting between the Services and Investment Groups was scheduled for July 23, 2003 in Puebla, Mexico to discuss how investments in services could be treated.

Mr. Deveaux impressed upon the audience the importance of resolving these issues for the negotiations in services to move forward and to hopefully be concluded before the January 2005 FTAA deadline.

Fax:  (242) 356- 7530

By e-mail to: info@scb.gov.bs 

For more information please contact: Sally Moss @ (242) 356-6291/2

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