960424

Hopes grow of

global telecoms pact

SINGAPORE: Hopes grew on Wednesday that the world's major trading nations could agree next week a worldwide pact to open their telecommunications markets to more competition.

Political and business leaders at a trade conference in Singapore said several positive moves towards the liberalisation of telecommunications industries over the last few days had made them hopeful that a deal could be reached.

The 51 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have set April 30 as a deadline for agreeing the deal, which would open up the world's US$513 billion telecommunications industries, bringing cheaper telephone calls and cutting business costs.

The European Union's (EU) Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan told a news conference the success of the four-way "Quad" summit of Canada, the European Union, Japan and the United States in Kobe, Japan, last week had raised his hopes for the pact.

"I am a born optimist and my optimism has been reinforced by the Quad meeting," Brittan said.

Brittan said last week that several obstacles had to be overcome before agreement could be reached and warned that failure to meet the deadline would cast a "dark shadow" over wider multilateral moves towards global free trade.

But both the EU and the United States said after Kobe that substantial progress had been made on telecommunications.

Acting U.S. trade representative Charlene Barshefsky said on Tuesday she expected the EU to improve shortly its offer in the telecommunications talks.

Brittan said another positive sign was an offer made earlier on Wednesday by Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong to speed up his country's moves towards free trade in telecommunications.

The Telecommunication Authority of Singapore (TAS) later said it would bring forward the liberalisation of its basic telecommunications services market by five years to 2002, instead of by 2007 as previously announced.

"The Singapore offer will certainly act as a catalyst," Brittan told the news conference, adding that he thought other countries in Southeast Asia might also be encouraged to make last-minute offers to smooth the signing of the agreement.

"The (telecoms) negotiations could be greatly enhanced by new offers (of concessions) from this part of the world," he said.

Brittan said he had even changed the text of a speech he was due to deliver to the trade conference later on Wednesday to reflect his more positive views on the telecommunications pact.

In a similar move, Fred Bergsten, a former senior U.S. official who now heads the Washington-based Institute for International Economics, revised his prepared speech to drop a negative reference to telecommunications liberalisation.

Explaining his hopes for the deal, Bergsten said a colleague had recently estimated the worldwide pay-off of a successful telecommunications pact could be up to a trillion dollars of benefits over the next 12 years.

"These are huge stakes - big benefits to be achieved," Bergsten told reporters.

WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero agreed that a successful telecommunications pact would have an enormous impact on world trade.

"The telecommunications (battle) has not yet already been won. But we hope, and we are pressing, that there will be more progress in these days - more progress, more improved offers."-Reuter