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HK welcomes conclusion of basic telecom negotiations
The Secretary for Trade and Industry, Miss Denise Yue, today (Sunday) welcomed the successful conclusion of the negotiations on basic telecommunications services conducted under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
The agreement reached in Geneva yesterday (February 15) will open up a huge market globally, estimated at US$600 billion per annum, for basic telecoms services. A total of 69 member governments have made various levels of binding commitments to open up their telecoms markets, accounting for over 90% of the global value of basic telecom services. The commitments made will come into effect on January 1, 1998.
"We are very pleased with the outcome of the negotiations. The package of offers presents substantial market access opportunities for our service suppliers, and provides a greater degree of certainty and predictability for telecoms investors," Miss Yue said.
Consumers will also benefit significantly from the liberalisation of the basic telecoms market. More competition in the market place is bound to foster more rapid technological advancement, reduce service charges and bring about improvements to the quality of services.
"The negotiations on basic telecommunications were protracted and difficult. We are therefore particularly pleased that the negotiations were concluded with a substantially improved package of offers and a broad level of participation from both developed and developing members of the WTO," Miss Yue said.
She said the successful conclusion of the negotiations demonstrated WTO members' commitment to the progressive liberalisation of their telecoms market. It also set a good example for the financial services negotiations to be resumed in April this year, and injected further impetus into the global liberalisation efforts.
Hong Kong's commitments under the agreement include the opening of its local telecoms services and a range of international telecoms services which have been ruled to be outside the licence of the Hong Kong Telecommunications International. The latter include, among others, call back services and international simple resale of fax and data services.