New Delhi, Dec 07: India will submit its offers on services at World Trade Organisation this week, ahead of the general council meeting on December 15 when senior officials from 148 member countries meet to break the stalemate in trade negotiations after the collapse of Cancun ministerial. Services negotiations at WTO are carried out in the form of offers and responses and India's offer is likely to include sectors like health, computer and related, telecom, engineering, construction, financial, tourism and travel, accounting and book-keeping and maritime in various modes of supply, official sources said.

They, however, said most of the offers cover Mode I and Mode 4 of supply implying cross border supply of services and movement of natural persons respectively. The offers made can be revised or withdrawn depending on the response received from the trading partners.

India had made limited commitments at the end of the Uruguay round in some sectors like engineering, tourism and computer-related, which are being revised now.

Cabinet committee on WTO, headed by the Prime Minister, had approved the broad strategy for services negotiations at WTO in June this year. The cabinet had also made it clear that government was not willing to negotiate on the opening up of distributive (retail and wholesale), legal, posts and courier and audio-visual services.

Bureau Report