KUALA LUMPUR: The Permanent Mission of Malaysia to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has called on the WTO to play a crucial role and “show its ability and readiness” to address global trade challenges, such as “unilateral actions by certain countries that lead to (a) trade war”.
The mission said in a statement that as one of the founding members, Malaysia will continue to engage constructively with other WTO members, as well as provide its leadership “to strengthen and uphold the rules-based multilateral trading system”.
Meanwhile, citing WTO statistics, the Permanent Representative of Malaysia to the WTO, Ambassador Syahril Syazli Ghazali, noted that the global services trade posted a strong 10% year-on-year increase in the third quarter of 2024, building on solid growth in the first half of the year. He said the rise in services exports and growth in imports across regions reflected high demand for diverse services.
“Specifically, in the third quarter of 2024, transport saw a 14% rise, international travellers’ expenditure in foreign economies increased by 10% and other commercial services (accounting for some 60% of total services trade) expanded by 8%. I urged members to intensify engagement in addressing outstanding issues, as well as exploring flexibilities to achieve potential deliverables for the upcoming Ministerial Conference in Younde, Cameroon,” he said in a statement in conjunction with the first meeting of the Council for Trade in Services (CTS) this year held on Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland.
This was Syahril Syazli's final meeting as chairman, and he officially handed over the chairmanship to the Permanent Representative of Nepal to the WTO, Ambassador Ram Prasad Subedi.
The CTS meeting discussed and addressed key outcomes emanating from the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi last year. The meeting also endorsed the framework of a questionnaire developed by the least-developed countries (LDC) to facilitate the implementation of the “LDC services waiver”, which aimed to provide preferential treatment to LDC services and service suppliers, as mandated by WTO ministers in Nairobi in 2015.
The CTS is one of the WTO’s tier-1 subsidiary bodies that oversees the implementation of the General Agreement for Trade in Services (GATS) and reports directly to the General Council.
The GATS provides a legal framework for addressing barriers to trade and investment in services. It includes specific commitments by WTO members to restrict their use of those barriers and provides a forum for further negotiations to open and facilitate services markets. These commitments are contained in member schedules, similar to the member schedules for tariffs. – Bernama
