Market access for the government procurement of services: Comparing recent PTAs with WTO achievements

The treatment of services in preferential trade agreements provides an important point of comparison with their treatment in the multilateral trading system. Recently, several studies have examined aspects of the treatment of services in PTAs. These analyses have provided insights into a number of important questions: (a) To what extent are countries willing to make broader and deeper commitments regarding services liberalization in PTAs as compared to the GATS? (b) Why is this so? (c) What costs does the proliferation of such commitments entail? (d) Can such commitments serve as building blocks for multilateral liberalization, or are they more likely to undermine it? An important related question concerns possibilities for the eventual multilateralization of commitments on services liberalization in PTAs (Baldwin, Evenett, and Low, 2007).