Turkmen skills honed for WTO accession talks with services trade workshop
Technical support to bolster Turkmenistan’s WTO accession capacity was rolled out with an ITC mission to Ashgabat from 4 to 7 March. Negotiators were trained how to navigate the WTO’s rules on trade in services.
The mission, which included engagement with key ministries and a training workshop, formed part of a European Union-funded project – Turkmenistan: Enhancing Trade Resilience and Integration. The project seeks to advance the country’s participation in global and regional trade.
With trade at its core, an integral element of the project is to support Turkmenistan’s integration in the global economy through its accession to the World Trade Organization. This will initiate reforms to stimulate trade and attract foreign investment into the country. In turn, it is hoped, this will foster economic growth and competitiveness and thereby increase Turkmenistan’s prosperity.
The EU project builds core technical skills, firstly to ensure a beneficial accession, and secondly to develop the necessary capacity to implement the WTO agreements.
Extensive technical training for Turkmenistan’s trade negotiators is envisaged over the next three years.
First up, the ITC delegation met with high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Finance and Economy, which leads the WTO accession process. The parties discussed the country’s technical needs and explored how to deliver on these.
The mission also put words to action with an intensive two-day training session for 50 officials on services trade and the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The participants represented key departments involved in regulating and administering services trade.
Services trade: key for income and jobs
A recent joint report of the WTO and World Bank shows that trade in services accounts for the largest share of global economic activity, generating more than two-thirds of global GDP. The services sector also employs most workers and is the source of most new job creation.
Services are indeed also key to an ambitious plan to diversify Turkmenistan’s economy and grow trade to encourage investment and competitiveness, according to Ylham Yarashov, Head of the WTO Cooperation Department in the Ministry of Finance and Economy.
The training, from 5 to 6 March, was led by Hamid Mamdouh, a former director of the WTO’s Trade in Services and Investment Division. He was directly involved in the development of the GATS and his insights were therefore highly relevant.
The workshop commenced with an orientation on how services unlock competitiveness and drive economic development.
This was followed by an overview of how services’ liberalization commitments are scheduled in WTO negotiations.
Participants then took a deep dive into the architecture of the GATS. Its objectives, structure and scope of application were explained. They learned about the four modes through which a service can be supplied, and key GATS obligations such as transparency, domestic regulation and recognition were covered.
