Table 3 and Annex Table 2 also report the limitations on duration of stay for CSSs, ISSs and ICTs in the year 2017, which impose recurrent visa application and associated costs, especially on frequent service providers. There is considerable heterogeneity in the duration of stay across countries, ranging from only one year for Switzerland, Costa Rica, Finland, Israel and Turkey (across service professionals) to four years in the case of Australia and Denmark (but only 2 years for ISSs); four-five years for the United Kingdom; and five years in the case of China, Japan, Latvia (but only one year for ISSs) and South Africa (though only four years for ICTs). The sample maxima point to the ground that the remaining countries in the OECD database can cover in extending the duration of stay to these services professionals (if not eliminating limitations on these stay durations altogether), thereby greatly reducing costs imposed on Mode 4 trade.<sup>5</sup> Reducing heterogeneity in such regulation would also form part of a possible TFiS agenda, which is discussed in detail next, together with an analysis of predominantly trade facilitation measures as identified in the OECD STRI database.

# **4. Facilitating regulatory compliance for Mode 4 trade**

Distinct from the measures discussed in Section 3, the OECD STRI data also include 16 measures that relate to providing regulatory transparency for MNP which constitute a reasonable Mode 4 TFiS agenda; the details of these measures are provided in Annex D. Even among the 45 countries covered by the OECD STRI data, there is huge heterogeneity in the measures of regulatory transparency as applicable to MNP, which suggests that there is ample scope for minimizing the associated compliance costs involved in meeting these regulations. At the same time, reducing such regulatory heterogeneity would also directly minimize services trade costs, thus constituting a services liberalization agenda.

This is illustrated below by discussing various attributes related to business visa applications, all of which translate into costs for service suppliers, including in terms of time, and thus easily form a part of an MNP TFiS agenda. The sample average of these attributes, together with the minima and maxima of the respective distributions, are summarized in Table 4 and by sector in Table 5. A quick look at these two tables shows that the average cost of obtaining a business visa is slightly higher at US$87 for logistics services compared to the sample average of US$84 for the countries covered by the OECD STRI database; for all the other sectors these monetary costs are lower than the sample average.

**<u>Table 4: Attributes of business visa applications: summary statistics (2017)</u>**

|**Attribute**|**Sample avg.**|**Min**|**Max **|
|---|---|---|---|
|Cost to obtain a business visa (USD)|84|7 (JPN)|297 (COL)|
|Duration of visa for crew (no. of months allowed)|5|0 (COL)|23 (IND)|
|No. of documents needed to obtain a business visa|9|2 (GBR)|16 (FRA)|
|Range of visaprocessingtime(days)|13|1(JPN)|32(CAN)|

Source: OECD STRI; own calculations

> 5 There is, however, no variation in limitations on duration for these service professionals across sectors for each country according to the STRI data for the year 2017 (detailed analysis at the sector level is presented in Annex Table 3).

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