Canada still in top 10 for offshore services
Canada still ranks among the top 10 most attractive locations for “ offshoring” services like information technology and call centres, although its ranking dipped this year, a study by management consulting firm A. T. Kearney found. Canada ranked ninth in 2005, down from eighth in 2004. But the country is still one of the few Western countries among the top 10. The United States ranked 11th. The top spot on the index went to India while China hung onto second place. Both countries have low costs and relevant people skills associated with them.
While it’s more expensive to run a business in Canada, the country makes up for cost partly by scoring well in terms of business environment, says Simon Bell, the director of A. T. Kearney’s global business policy council.
That category includes the extent of red tape, regulation, infrastructure quality, data security and the country’s political environment.
going far enough. The Canadian trade official said a breakthrough on the issue is key to reaching an overall deal, since the countries at the talks agreed to deal with agriculture first.
In Geneva yesterday, European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson agreed the prospects looked dim for Hong Kong, but held out hope that enough momentum would be made for a deal soon afterward.
“ We want Hong Kong to be more than treading water,” he said after a one- day session with ministers from Brazil, India, Japan and the United States. “ It should lock in the progress made here and put in place, as far as possible, a springboard for advance in 2006.’’
While delaying a deal past the Hong Kong meeting would make it difficult to stay on schedule, Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said the deadline for a final deal one year later would not be extended.
“ We are not looking at postponing the round at all. We are looking at completing ( it). . . on Dec. 31, 2006,” he told a news conference after holding talks with counterparts from Brazil, the European Union and the United States.
Canadian Trade Minister Jim Peterson said success at the WTO is crucial for Canada.
“ Canada is a trading nation,” he told the Star in an interview from Ottawa to discuss Canada’s goals for the current round of world trade negotiations.
“ We want access for Canadian goods and services to foreign markets,” said Peterson, who expects to be in Geneva for lastminute talks before the start of the Hong Kong meeting. When the current round of talks was launched in Doha, Qatar, four years ago, negotiators agreed to set their goals for cuts to farm subsidies and other barriers by the end of 2005. The details of how to achieve those goals would then be negotiated over the following year, giving the U. S. time to get the deal accepted by Congress before the White House’s fasttrack trade authority expires in July 2007. The Canadian trade official said that one year to work out those details would be tight, especially with mid-term Congressional elections looming in the U. S. just as the talks would be coming to a close.
Peterson said that while a deal might not be reached in Hong Kong, he is optimistic that one could be reached in time to negotiate a final deal by the end of 2006, as planned. “We probably have a maximum of four months after Hong Kong” to set the goals for the final negotiations, he said. Tony Clarke, director of the left-leaning Polaris Institute, said the further the WTO falls behind schedule, the tougher it will be to reach a deal on other issues — industrial tariffs and trade in services such as banking, water and health. He worries that such talks will end up being rushed as a result of the delays, since countries have held off fully discussing other issues until they settled the farm subsidy question.
“Things are kept in the hip pocket and then brought out at the last minute. These things become deal breakers and there’s been no debate on the implications,” he said in an interview from Ottawa. “That’s where some very stupid mistakes are going to be made.” A failure to reach a deal in Hong Kong would be a third strike against the WTO. The Seattle talks in 1999 collapsed amid street riots and anger among developing nations that they had been left out of last-minute efforts toward a deal. In Cancun two years ago, dissatisfaction among developing countries also caused the meeting to end in failure. The Canadian trade official said Seattle failed because there was not enough consensus among participants about whether they even wanted to negotiate a new trade deal, and that Cancun was a failure because the countries could not agree on an agenda.
“ We have all that now,” he said. A report yesterday by the chair of the agriculture negotiations, New Zealand WTO Ambassador Crawford Falconer, outlined just how far apart all the countries remain on the issue.
“ The reality is that we have yet to find that last bridge to agreement that we need,” Falconer wrote in the 10- page report. “ It would be a grave error, in my view, to imagine that we can take much time to find that bridge. . . . We must maintain momentum. You don’t close divergences by taking time off to have a cup of tea.”
Clarke at the Polaris Institute said the key to a deal could actually rest with Brazil. As one of the largest developing countries at the talks, it has led the resistance to EU pressure that the developing world open up markets to more trade in services. But a signal from Brazil that it’s open to the idea could push Europe to further cut farm subsidies and end the logjam, Clarke said.