 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Developing Nations Miss WTO Deadline
by William New
As the June 30 deadline passed for the 144 members of the World Trade Organization to make requests of other WTO members to open their services markets, only a handful of developed nations complied, a European Union source said Tuesday.
"It may not be in the double figures," the official said. "It was very hard for developing countries to meet that [deadline]." The official said elections, wars and stronger interest in trade in primary commodities contributed to the low response rate. "Some countries are still trying to find out how to feed their people," she said.
Even developing countries that recognize the need to modernize their economies are confronted with questions of priority within services, such as whether to focus on education, a communications backbone or information technology, the EU official said.
However, she said there is still time for requests, as "nobody's going to treat [the deadline] as hard and fast." Countries may use September as the next big deadline to send requests because bilateral discussions on the requests begin in earnest in October.
Some developing countries have said they lack the technical expertise to craft the formal requests, and some have indicated that their requests will target certain sectors or regulations. Some may focus on trade with neighboring countries.
The European Union made requests to "pretty much every country" in the WTO, as did the United States, the EU official said.
On Monday, U.S. officials released a broad characterization of its requests. The Information Technology Association of America and the Competitive Telecommunications Association (CompTel) issued statements Tuesday applauding the U.S. requests. CompTel said the international telecommunications negotiation is "especially important to the U.S. economy in light of the difficult market conditions" domestically for service providers.
The European Union will release a statement on its requests soon, the EU official said. In their request to the United States, Europeans targeted "things we want them to remove," as well as "things not in their schedule [of liberalization commitments] that we would like to see there," the official said. She declined to provide more specifics.
The services and agriculture negotiations technically began in 2000, though they gained steam after the broader negotiating round launched at the WTO ministerial in Doha, Qatar, last fall. The EU official rejected the notion that the services talks are further along because of the early start. Services struggle "to stay in the same place," she said. "There are serious questions out there."
The United States has urged countries to move as quickly as possible on formulating requests given the tight timeframe for negotiations that are supposed to conclude in 2005. The schedule adopted in Doha dictates that countries' offers to liberalize should follow by March 31, 2003.
Russian, U.S. Officials Meet On Services
Trade officials from the Russia Federation and the United States are holding meetings this week in Washington to discuss Russia's offer to liberalize its services markets -- including telecommunications -- en route to the nation's accession to the World Trade Organization.
Maxim Medvedkov, the deputy minister of economic development and trade, is leading the Russian delegation to the July 1-3 meeting. Dorothy Dwoskin, the assistant U.S. trade representative for the WTO and multilateral affairs and the lead U.S. negotiator on Russian accession, is heading the U.S. delegation.
North American Public Seminar On FTAA
The United States, Canada and Mexico on Tuesday invited the public to attend a regional seminar on negotiation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Merida, Mexico, on July 18.
The seminar will provide an opportunity to hear governmental and non-governmental officials discuss various aspects of the FTAA negotiation, including access to participating nations' markets, the transparency of their laws, civil participation in the process, and the potential impact of an FTAA deal on sectors like agriculture, services and investment.
The event is one of several regional FTAA seminars planned for the public in the Western Hemisphere. Prospective participants must register via the Internet.
Business Group Seeks IT Incentives In Japan
The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan this week recommended that Japan introduce new tax incentives, such as tax credits and write-offs for expenses, for investments in information technology. The chamber said that while Japan has recognized the IT market's role in returning the country to fiscal health, the prolonged economic slump has caused "remarkable" downturn in the market for software and hardware, particularly personal computers.
The chamber said that Japan could: reduce the depreciation periods for IT-related equipment; allow accelerated depreciation on capital equipment bought for research and development and production purposes; and encourage software investment and application development through immediate depreciation for purchases of software.
The chamber also suggested a tax credit permitting companies to deduct from corporate income taxes a percentage of their overall IT investment (including training, consulting and outsourcing) in a given year.
Also in Japan, two new laws designed to stop unsolicited e-mail, or spam, sent by cell phone or computer took effect Monday. Yomiuri Shimbun reports that the laws prohibit commercial operations from sending e-mail again to people who have indicated they do not want such messages. The laws, one regulating specific e-mails and the other revising a law regulating commercial transactions, carry penalty clauses applicable to operators. Nearly a billion e-mail messages are exchanged via cell phone each day in Japan, more than 80 percent of them randomly.
From Australia To Uganda
The Australian Senate has defeated a proposal by Prime Minister John Howard's administration that would have allowed government agencies to intercept and read e-mail, instantaneous messages and voice mail without a warrant. It would have left in place the requirement for a warrant to intercept telephone calls. Australian IT reports that the bill was part of a package of anti-terrorism measures.
Meanwhile, Spain has passed a law regulating e-commerce that gives Internet service providers more responsibility for content on their pages and requires the storage of data on clients for at least one year. The law brings Spain into line with European Union guidelines and is expected to take effect after the summer, Reuters reported.
In other news, after decades with minimal telecommunications, Afghanistan will witness the opening of several Internet cafes in the next few weeks and now has a mobile-phone network, technologies that were not allowed under the Taliban. The new, state-affiliated Afghan Wireless Communication Company will be the nation's first Internet service provider. The company launched the first cellular network in April, according to AP.
And a rural technology center in Uganda is helping female farmers use compact discs on computers to get practical advice on increasing crop yields, managing livestock and marketing their produce, among other things. The center's coordinator, Rita Mijumbi, said the center originally tried to use the Internet and e-mail to get the information to the farmers. But the lack of relevant content on the Internet was a deterrence, she told BBC News.
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
