The Global Services Network (GSN) is an informal, private sector-led forum which gathers the global services community of business people, government officials, and academics who are committed to increased trade and investment in services, and a rules-based, multilateral trading system*. The GSN calls on the World Trade Organization (WTO) to agree to a Doha Declaration establishing a new round of trade negotiations, to be completed in three years, at the Qatar Ministerial Meeting in November. The GSN is dedicated to building global support for the liberalization of international services trade through multilateral negotiations under the auspices of the WTO through the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Misrepresentations regarding the WTO and GATS presently being disseminated are harmful and must be countered through public education.

Services underpin all forms of international trade and permeate all aspects of global and domestic economic activity. The diversity of services includes accountancy, audio-visual, distribution, education, energy, engineering & construction, environmental, express delivery, financial, health, information technology, legal, telecommunications, transportation, travel and tourism, education and professional and business services. Service industries contribute to real gross domestic product as basic production inputs to a wide variety of industries in developed and developing countries. Well functioning services are essential for higher growth and competitiveness in all sectors of the economy. The liberalization of services markets enables developing countries to create essential infrastructure to speed their modernization, providing increased choice of the broadest range of innovative products and services at the lowest cost.

WTO member governments are urged to launch a new round of trade negotiations at the Qatar Ministerial Meeting. Substantial agreement on services can best be achieved in the context of a wider and broad based round.

Negotiations on services in the WTO present governments with the opportunity to liberalize trade in services and limitations to national treatment by committing themselves to reducing barriers to market entry in all modes of supply, and to reform domestic regulations that hinder open markets. The WTO negotiations on services should achieve a contestable, competitive market in the service sector of every WTO member country. To accomplish this, WTO Member governments are encouraged to:

1. Secure further binding commitments in as many sectors as possible for market access and national treatment with minimal conditions and limitations. Where necessary, agreed transition periods might be negotiated.
2. Eliminate unnecessary restrictions to cross-border services supply and consumption of services abroad to encourage trade without requiring establishment.
3. Recognize that liberalization of services markets in both developing and developed countries is critical to their economies to strengthen domestic services capacity, efficiency, and competitiveness. Governments should extend technical assistance to developing countries to ensure their full preparation and participation in the negotiations on services, and their ability to fully implement commitments.
4. Implement and enforce GATS commitments in services sectors already negotiated and bound. WTO members should strive to undertake and implement commitments to open markets for the supply of telecommunication services and adopt the regulatory principles of the reference paper. WTO members that have not made commitments to the Financial Services Agreement, should do so. Present signatories to the Agreement should ratify and implement their commitments under that agreement.
5. Under Article VI of the GATS, develop disciplines either on a sectoral or horizontal basis for domestic regulation that result in transparent and predictable outcomes, and the imposition of the least trade restrictive and least burdensome rules based on objective criteria, so as to promote freer trade and equitable competition and to encourage cooperation between independent sectoral regulators.
6. Make all possible efforts to progressively eliminate barriers to the temporary movement of key business personnel.
7. Advance electronic commerce by making commitments in those services that facilitate electronic commerce. Continue the WTO Work Program on Electronic Commerce and extend the WTO Moratorium on Customs Duties on Electronic Transmissions.
8. Agree on transparent disciplines in public procurement in services, with the objective of a single, binding WTO multilateral set of rules on procurement based on non-discrimination.
9. Continue improving the transparency and openness of the WTO to strengthen confidence in its proceedings. Access to documents and decisions should be made available to the public on a timely basis.