Ш. Services: The GATS agreement

The GATS deals with international trade in services and covers the following commitment: If a country allows foreign competition in a sector, equal opportunities should be given to service providers from all other WTO members. In order to reach transparency, governments have to publish all relevant laws and regulations. Besides this, foreign companies and governments have to be served with all required information about regulation in any service sector on request.

Moreover, WTO members agreed to recognize other countries' qualifications without discrimination, to grant each other access to their markets, to accept commitments concerning the opening of any market as bounded and to recognize the importance of a stable financial system.'

Nevertheless, an exemption list of the principle of non-discrimination exists: This concerns preferential agreements in service on that some countries have been agreed before the WTO entered into force. Continue negotiations will effect in four areas: basic telecommunications, maritime transport, movement of natural persons and financial services. Also the rules dealing with subsidies, government procurement, safeguard measures and technical and qualified standard of products are areas that will be discussed in future negotiations.

IV. Intellectual property: The TRIPS agreement

Intellectual property rights (IPR) give creators the right to prevent others from using their inventions, designs or other creations. Copyright and related rights, trademarks (including service marks), geographical indications (place names), industrial designs, patens, layout-designs and undisclosed information (including trade secrets) are the areas covered by the TRIPS agreement. The TRIPS agreement will protect these rights and bring them under common international rules. Industrial designs and layout designs will be protected for at least 10 years, patents for products and processes for at least 20 years. \

The owner of any form of IPR can issue a license for someone else to produce or copy his trademark, work, design etc. Under certain conditions, governments have the right to take action to prevent anti-competitive licensing that abuses IPR's. Besides this, the government should make sure that the owner of IPR receives assistance to prevent imports of pirated goods. When there are trade disputes over intellectual property rights, the WTO will settle them between its members.

Developing countries like Namibia have time until the year 2000 to ensure that their laws and practices conform with the TRIPS agreement. If a developing country did not provide product patent protection in a particular area of technology it has time until the year 2005 introduce the protection. Pharmaceutical, agricultural and chemical products are exempted from this regulation.

V. Anti-dumping, subsidies and safeguard measures

Binding tariffs, and applying them equally to all trading partners are the main principle of the WTO. Nevertheless, the WTO take actions against selling at an unfairly low price (dumping),and it allows special subsidies as well as emergency measures in order to limit imports temporarily.

If a company exports a product at a price lower than the price it charges on its own market, it is said to be "dumping" the product and an import duty can be charged as an anti-dumping measure. But this is only allowed if a detailed investigation shows that dumping is taking place and a domestic industry is being hurt.

The WTO distinguishes between prohibited subsidies, that support exports of companies and distort international trade, actionable subsidies, which help domestic industries and are allowed as long as they do not hurt the importing party and non-actionable subsidies, which are only used for industrial research or other assistance and development activities, Least developed countries and developed countries with less than US $ 1,000 per capita GNP are exempted from the regulation of prohibited subsidies. Other developed countries have to stop their export subsidies until 2003.

A WTO member may restrict imports of product temporarily if its domestic industry is injured or threatened with injury caused by a surge in imports. These safeguard measures should not last more than four years, although it can be extended to eight years. When a country restricts imports in order to safeguard its main producers, the exporting country can seek compensation through consultations or take equivalent protective actions.

VI. Settling disputes

WTO members have agreed that if they believe fellow-members are violating trade rules, they will use the multilateral system of settling disputes instead of taking action unilaterally, In 1997, 19 of 71 cases had been settled out of court just through consultations, without going through the full panel process, which takes 15 months.

The first stage is consultations between the governments concerned in order to settle their differences by themselves. If that fails the complaining country can ask for a panel to be appointed. The panel is like a tribunal, consisting of three experts from different countries who examine the evidence and decide which party is right. Either side can appellate a panel's ruling but it has to be based on point of law. If the country that is the target of the complaints does not follow the recommendations of the panel report it has to enter into negotiations with the complaining country. If the contracting parties do not agree within 20 days, sanctions should be imposed.

VII Implications for developing and least developed countries Provisions of the agreement

More than 75% of the WTO members are developing countries. Actually, the developing countries' share of world trade is less than 20% To the opinion of the WTO low-income countries gain economic and political independence through a membership of the WTO because of the introduction of domestic reforms, special provisions for developing countries and a strengthened multilateral trading system. TheWTO agreement contains special provisions for developing countries, e.g. non-reciprocity in trade negotiations between developed and developing countries and the WTO Secretariat provides technical assistance. Besides this, the developing countries have extra time to fulfill the WTO commitments, greater market access is granted and they get assistance in order to achieve the international standards required. Special technical cooperation, that should help to build the necessary institutions on training the people, is also offered.

Moreover, a plan of action for least-developed countries has been established in order to help them to improve their ability to participate in the multilateral system. Developed countries will examine how the least-developed countries could improve access to their markets. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the UN Development Programme support this plan. The WTO Committee on Trade and Development, which helps to implement this structure, assists developing countries further with technical cooperation and supports preferential arrangements such as the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). The goal is to increase their economic growth due to a raise in exports of manufactured goods so that they become less dependent on exports of primary goods.

Negative impacts

Although the industrial countries agreed to grant developing countries access to their markets, e.g. through reduced tariffs, selected products like fish and textiles will continue to have high tariffs. Another issue that worries developing countries is the erosion of preferences: special tariff concessions granted by developed countries on imports from certain developing countries become less meaningful if the normal tariff rates are cut so that the difference between the normal and die preferential rate is reduced. That implicates income losses for whole Africa.

Besides this, least developed countries fear that agricultural reforms will lead to increases in world prices what will be bad for poor food-importing countries. On the other hand, an increase in world prices for primary products will help developing countries to increase their export proceeds.

Another concern of developing and least developed countries is that the TRIPS agreement protects mainly the intellectual property of large multinational firms and worsens inequalities. Nevertheless, they accepted the agreement. Some developing countries, like Namibia, introduced already intellectual property protection regimes in inter-regional trade agreements.