Public concern about the impacts of the GATS will almost certainly grow, as the agreement becomes more widely understood outside business and trade circles. A similar movement can be expected to mobilize around the GATS negotiations and there is good reason to believe that another essential victory can be achieved, says Sinclair. Services are associated with everything the public need and everything they elect governments to do. Broadly defined, a service is a product of human activity aimed to satisfy a human need, which does not constitute a tangible commodity. There are many types of services, ranging from heart surgery to road construction, electricity transmission to education, and childcare to water purification.
Services affect virtually all aspects of peoples lives from birth to death.
Countless people deliver services, vital to our daily lives and in turn, many jobs are directly tied to the provision of services to others. More broadly, how the delivery of vital services, and at affordable prices and universally accessible, is a fundamental aspect of how we govern ourselves. Global business interests are seeking binding, global and irreversible rules on services. It should come as no surprise that transnational corporations, as they expand and extend their global reach, increasingly have a strong interest in reducing the cost of complying with the regulations they face in different countries. They also benefit by reducing competition from domestic, sometimes publicly owned, firms and from the privatization and commercialization of public enterprise that allows them to expand their market share.