Case Study of Egypt's Service Liberalization, Service Barriers and Implementation of the GATS Agreement

This paper overviews and analyzes Egypt's service sector, its commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the country's main service liberalization policies. The paper compares Egypt's GATS commitments to those of other developing countries. It argues that the pattern of public sector dominance in services has created government monopolies where privatization and anti-trust issues slow down the progress of liberalization and further GATS commitments. It then analyzes the literature and the experiences of other countries in order to highlight potential gains from service liberalization in Egypt. The paper recommends that service liberalization be a goal in its own right and that emphasis should be placed on more competitive sectors where the risk of market power is limited.