The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) mandates WTO members to develop any necessary disciplines to ensure that measures relating to qualification requirements and procedures, technical standards and licensing requirements and procedures do not constitute unnecessary barriers to trade in services. HKC has long been a champion of robust disciplines to remove such barriers.
At the Eleventh Ministerial Conference in 2017, HKC was one of the 57 WTO members to present a proposal, and one of the 60 WTO members who jointly issued a ministerial statement reaffirming our commitment to advancing the talks, with the aim of successfully concluding the negotiation before the next ministerial conference. Since then, HKC has participated actively in the intensified discussions on the negotiation text.