Lebanon wants to spearhead a regional agreement for liberalization of trade in services. This is the aim which the director general at the ministry of economy and trade, Fady Makki, outlined to the audience in a conference on liberalization of trade in services in the Arab world in the middle of last month.
According to Makki, official delegations from five Arab countries had just a week earlier completed their first meetings of a first round of talks on regional liberalization of trade in services. Called the Beirut round, the target of the negotiations was to implement an agreement on free trade in services by beginning of 2006. The pact could enter into effect after ratification by only three Arab countries and Lebanon and Jordan would be among the first three countries that are “prime candidates to ratify intra-Arab free trade in services,” he said.
However, awareness of the issue in Lebanon was not yet strong, Makki warned, and urged the country’s professionals to communicate their demands and expectations from such an agreement to the ministry, for inclusion in the Lebanese delegation’s agenda.
The conference was organized by recent business services enterprise, World Trade Center Beirut, which plans to stage annual conferences on trade liberalization. A related theme, specifically the role of cross border investments in the Arab world, was the topic also of another conference, convened over the same two days by the Union of Arab Banks at the Phoenicia Intercontinental. The events coincided due to their timing immediately prior to the beginning of Ramadan.
While they saw value in the opportunities to meet with colleagues on the sidelines of the event, several Lebanese bankers opined that in terms of lectures and presentations such conferences generally would not offer many additional perspectives to similar events held in the past.
