Paying the Price for Joining the WTO: A Comparative Assessment of Services Sector Commitments by WTO Members and Acceding Countries

This paper focuses on the accession process for new WTO membership. The basic premise is that the commitments demanded are too onerous for new members. It argues that the whole process is fundamentally flawed and, in fact, forces applicant countries to accept demands that are not required under WTO agreements.

Section 2 is a brief discussion of the process of accession and highlights the inherent flaws.

Section 3 focuses on one of the crucial international trade agreements, the General Agreement in Trade and Services (GATS) and provides sector-specific commitments by countries.

Section 4 uses a series of statistical tests to verify whether acceding countries have made significantly higher number of specific commitments than existing WTO members.

Section 5 makes some concluding observations.
The paper uses a strong body of econometric evidence to support its claim that acceding countries undertake greater commitments than those made by WTO members of a similar development status.

Roman Grynberg is the Deputy Director of the Economic Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat, London.

Mohammad A. Razzaque is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has written extensively on trade policy issues.