Trade in Educational Services and the Doha WTO Round: the need to move out of current impasse

Trade in educational services (ES) is a potentially very lucrative source of revenue for a country and its schools, universities and training providers. For example, exports of ES and their respective share of all exported services in 2000 amounted to 10.28 Billion USD (3.5%) for the USA and 2.155 Billion USD (11.8%) for Australia. Looking at the world market of ES, the total value of annual trade in 1999 in higher education services has been estimated at 30 Billion USD reaching 50% of trade in financial services estimated at 59.3 Billion USD. These figures would even be higher if estimates were available for total trade in ES. Higher education is only one of five sub sectors in ES. Not included are trade in primary secondary and adult education services.

Saner, R. 2005. Trade in Educational Services and the Doha WTO Round: the need to move out of current impasse. Paper presented at the ECG-WTO, August 2005.

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