social security regulations and labor market tests in importing countries (which may be among the most burdensome regulation that importing countries resort to; see Section 3 for details).

These costs are accentuated by limitations on duration of stay associated with a visa, which again differ by importing country, as they necessitate multiple re-applications especially in the case of frequent service suppliers. In fact, a well-recognized challenge for MNP is the absence of any linkage between the duration for which a service supplier requires a visa to deliver the service and the actual duration for which a visa may be granted. This problem is compounded when importing countries do not entertain visa extensions or do not grant multiple-entry visas, which is especially true in the case of aircrew, seamen and truck drivers (see Section 4 for details). In fact, the Russian Federation does not grant multiple-entry visas even to business visitors (see Section 4 for details).

All these attributes generate costs, including in terms of time spent, even if they are applied on a nondiscriminatory basis but the costs get compounded in the event of “(i) (asymmetric) information on the applicable rules and requirements; (ii) the associated certification/conformity assessment processes; and (iii) uncertainty/variability in administration of (i) and (ii).” (Hoekman, 2016, op.cit.) Given the above, there are three potential channels for lowering trade costs pertaining to MNP and facilitating Mode 4 trade. One, to completely eliminate or sufficiently reduce unnecessarily restrictive formal (explicit) barriers to Mode 4 trade (these are captured in the OECD’s STRI data on MNP and discussed in detail in Section 3). Two, work to attenuate the prevalence of regulatory heterogeneity across countries for given sectors or activities (some suggestions on this are discussed in detail in Section 4 on the basis of the OECD’s STRI data on regulatory transparency for MNP). Three, take actions to lower compliance and administrative costs for service suppliers (some suggestions in this regard are also provided in Section 4). While the first channel would classify as trade liberalization, channels two and three would constitute as trade facilitation and are thus the focus of this paper, as its main objective is to provide details for a possible TFiS agenda.

In fact, when it comes to Mode 4 trade - where services trade barriers are very high and the potential gains are large (for instance see Walmsley et al. 2007) - there may be scope for even narrower trade facilitation measures to have more than a trivial effect. A case in point is India’s waiver of visa fees for LDC tour-guides and language teachers under the LDC Services Waiver, wherein the objective is to provide unilateral preferences to semi- and unskilled Mode 4 laborers in LDCs. Not only are visa fees often very high relative to average per capita incomes of the applicants’ countries (for details see Section 4), the entire visa application process is fraught with great uncertainty about the eventual outcome, including the variability in duration of visa processing times (for details see Section 4). All this is particularly onerous for LDC and developing country applicants (Drake-Brockman et al. 2016), likely resulting in an adverse extensive margin effect on Mode 4 services exporters.

Against this background, any agenda to facilitate MNP should focus on increasing transparency, streamlining procedures, and removing unnecessary red tape and bottlenecks associated in administering regulatory policies applicable to Mode 4 trade. Such an agenda would take domestic regulation on MNP as given and focus instead on reducing the costs of regulatory heterogeneity and processes associated with the implementation of Mode 4 services trade policies via actions to lower administrative and compliance costs for foreign service suppliers and making it easy for them to access importing country markets.

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