The Doha Round and Financial Services Negotiations

In this study, Sydney J. Key provides a unique framework for analyzing the role of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the liberalization and regulation of the financial services sector. Throughout, she emphasizes the complementary and mutually reinforcing relationship between efforts to open markets under the GATS and the intensive ongoing international work on strengthening domestic financial systems, including prudential regulation and supervision. Key’s study identifies six broad goals for the financial services negotiations in the Doha round. Four of the goals involve what she terms first-pillar liberalization, aimed at achieving national treatment and market access. These include binding existing and ongoing liberalization and narrowing or withdrawing broad most favored nation exemptions. The final two goals involve second-pillar liberalization, aimed at removing nonquantitative and nondiscriminatory structural barriers. This requires strengthening GATS disciplines on regulatory transparency and removing barriers to effective market access.
Key concludes that success in achieving the goals discussed in this study depends significantly on factors beyond the scope of the Doha round negotiations, but she emphasizes the important role the negotiations can play in helping to accelerate the process of liberalization of trade in financial services.