Capacity Building for the MENA Countries in the Forthcoming WTO Negotiations: the Core Area of Services Networks

This capacity-building project, managed jointly by the IAI and the World Bank Institute (Washington) aimed to analyze the negotiating issues at the core of the future multilateral talks of the World Trade Organisation and enhancement of the capacities of the Mediterranean area countries to participate actively in them. The initiative was conceived as part of the multi-year project of the World Bank Institute "Preparing for the WTO 2000 negotiations: a proposal to enhance developing country participation" and aimed to contribute to the phase involving a comparison of the experiences of the "developing macroregions" in defining their strategies for a new multilateral round, with attention in the IAI project to the southern shore of the Mediterranean. The analysis targets the new issues of international trade and the services, with special attention to several sectorial case studies, such as telecommunications, financial services and audiovisuals. The objective was to define the impact of the new unilateral, regional and multilateral regimes on the MENA area countries and whether this impact can be carried over to the multilateral sphere of the liberalization experience in the Euro-Mediterranean agreements. The findings were presented in a conference held in Tunis in April 2002.

Funding: World Bank