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8. When a natural person provides a service, it is the
value of his or her service or
product delivered that is
the main variable to be identified and measured, to
allow comparisons across the modes of supply and
between countries. In the case of services transaction
between residents and non-residents, a value of
contract or income received may be seen as the best
measure for quantifying this type of trade. However,
employment does not lend itself to product
classification. In addition, as has been noted, more than
one mode of supply may be involved
in the delivery of
a service product, and the allocation of the value of
trade according to the modes of supply may be
difficult. Other types of statistics that may be used to
demonstrate the importance of the movement of
persons in the delivery of a service are (a) income of
the foreign natural persons temporarily engaged for the
delivery of services in all domestic companies or to
natural persons directly, and/or (b) the number of these
foreign persons.
9. As underlined above, GATS makes clear that in the
GATS trade sense mode 4 does not represent
international migration as commonly defined. The key
differentiating factor is the GATS notion that the
presence of natural persons
is not for permanent
employment in the receiving country - as self-employed
or by an establishment located there - but for the purpose
of temporarily supplying a service there. When the
service product has been delivered, the presence is to be
terminated and the natural person should leave the
country. Hence the temporary nature of the movement as
well as of the contact between the service provider and
the consumer of the service
is a key criterion for this
mode of supply.
10. A one-year rule for residency for persons as well
as establishments is used in BPM5, the 1993 SNA and
the recommendations concerning international
migration. Applying this rule of thumb means that
whether and how foreign nationals’ economic
activities are attributed statistically to the economies
of the sending and receiving countries will depend on
the length of their stay in the host country. However,
the one-year cut-off point adopted in the statistical
frameworks does not correspond
to the meaning of a
“temporary stay” adopted in GATS. As a result, the
available statistical information on economic
activities of residents will contain elements related to
the temporary (in the GATS sense) presence. Thus,
from the point of view of trade policy, the one-year
rule for residency and the related statistics are not
very satisfactory.
11. It should be noted that although the GATS
agreement covers all categories of persons who deliver a
service while resident
in another WTO member country,
so far, for the majority of member countries, GATS
commitments have been made only for business visitors
and investment-related visits. These commitments
include high-level managers as well as specialists with
unique knowledge, normally not available locally.
Foreign seasonal and short-term workers in, for
example, agriculture, hotel and catering, or construction
have not been included so far
in a WTO member
country’s commitment under GATS, even if they do not
obtain residence status in the country and thus satisfy the
GATS criteria. This is because national legislation will
tend to see them as “non-resident employees” of those
engaging them, and their provision of labour services is
not seen as being part of international trade. The interest
of policy makers and trade negotiators would be to
identify in the statistics all foreign nationals who are
delivering service products of
the type for which
commitments are being made or that might be made in
the future, as well as, and separately from, statistics on
foreigners employed "directly" with a resident and non-
resident status. Together, such statistics will provide
good indicators of the extent to which the domestic
economy is dependent on foreign workers as well as the
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