India offers to waive off visa fees to LDCs at WTO meet
Tuesday, 10 February 2015
GENEVA, Feb 9 (PTI): India has made substantial offers such as waiving visa fees, granting market access and technical assistance to service providers from poor nations, showing its resolve to support Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
The offers were made at a high-level World Trade Organisation meeting here convened to indicate proposals from developed and developing countries for preferential treatment to service providers from LDCs.
High visa fees are one of the biggest impediments for service providers from the poorer nations. "Onerous application fees for visas, licences and residence and work permits for many LDCs are tantamount to one month's salary for the families. Also, a severe loss if the visa is not granted and the fees are not returned," said Uganda's minister of trade, industry and cooperatives Amelia Anne Kyambadde.
"Visa waiver is a really good thing if India does it in practice," said LDC coordinator and Ugandan ambassador Christopher Onyanga Aparr. The Indian offers made in a meeting on Thursday includes market access, capacity building and technical assistance to service providers from these nations. The offer is specific to the requests made by LDCs in July 2014.
The sectors for preferential treatment in market access, under the General Agreement and Trade in Services plus new Mode Four commitments - contractual service suppliers and independent professionals - are engineering services and management consulting services (excluding those in legal consultancy).