ABSTRACT
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), a product of the Uruguay Round, has been an innovative attempt at constructing a realistic framework for liberalisation of trade in services. It has helped in the creation of global space for multilateral trading rules in services. The GATS, which governs multilateral trading in services, covers, in principle, all service sectors and all measures affecting such trade by the following four modes of delivery: crossborder trade, trade by consumption abroad, trade through commercial presence, and trade by means of temporary presence of natural persons. A major problem with “differential treatment” under the GATS is related to the non-tariff barriers, which are not quantifiable. Thus, no across-the-board solution is available similar to the case of the Generalised System of Preferences for multilateral trade in goods. It is also not easy to expect tariffication of such barriers in the millennium round.
