Zambia

Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Zambia regarding the surrender of persons to International Tribunals. Lusaka 1 July 2003

Zambia is a “Landlocked Land of Opportunity” for services and services exports. Its mining boom has been translating into opportunities for services including direct services exports in the four modes of supply.

This paper focuses on Zambia as an LDC and a services exporter. It does so embedded in the immediate context of the overall question of LDC services exports their promotion and the operationalisation of the WTO’s LDC Services Waiver. It thus serves as a case study — one of an initial set of four — and should be read in conjunction with the overview paper “Effective Market Access for LDC Services Exports — An Analysis of the WTO Services Waiver for LDCs” which considers cross-cutting observations and conclusions.

This section explores services of interest related exports or export potentials and obstacles encountered in export markets. It juxtaposes these obstacles with possible solutions that could be imagined to be implemented by importing countries whether under the WTO Services Waiver or otherwise and with the preferences actually notified by the 24 WTO Members that have come forward under the Waiver. This is done here on a selective sometimes anecdotal basis and hence remains illustrative but is nonetheless already rather instructive.

This publication forms part of the background research for the study titled “Effective market access for least developed countries’ services exports; An analysis of the World Trade Organization services waiver for least developed countries” (UNCTAD/DITC/TNCD/2019/1). The research was originally undertaken in 2017 and has been released for publication to help policymakers understand some of the intricacies behind the original study. Some details may have since changed.

The LDC Waiver is a legal tool that enables WTO Members to sidestep their obligation to treat all services imports equally under the Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) clause through the granting preferential treatment to services and service exporters from a Least Developed Country (LDC). It is similar to the “Enabling Clause” for goods within the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) except that the Waiver only benefits LDCs not all developing countries. It operates thus as an “LDC-only Enabling Clause for services”. The Waiver only enables preferences it does not require WTO Members to grant them nor provide them with specific ideas or tools to facilitate LDCs’ exports into their markets. This paper presents the findings of the pilot study on Zambia. Focusing on a selection of services sectors of particular export interest to Zambia this case-study assesses where appropriate on an anecdotal basis whether and to what extent the preferences granted by WTO Members respond to the market access regulatory and other barriers experienced by Zambia’s services exporters in their export market(s). By converging all available sources of information the analysis aims to identify the relevance of the notified preferences for Zambia’s services exports possible gaps and opportunities for further development of improved market access mechanisms as well as its utilization by LDC services exporters.