Trade in Energy Services in BCIM, BIMSTEC + 1 and ASEAN + 4 Regions-potentials and Challenges

Contribution of service sector among world is increasing over the years and playing a major role in world trade system. Service sectors in WTO are generally governed by General Agreement on trade in service (GATS) which formed in 1995. As trade facilitation agreement (TFA) in goods under WTO come into force, India also submitted legal draft document to multilateral body for creating multilateral agreement for services (WTO ministerial meeting in Argentina, Jan 2017). But in WTO, still GATS are ongoing issue under current Doha agenda for more liberalization in different service sectors specific issue through successive round of negotiation. In this paper authors try to depict definition of energy services based on related services associated with energy through different service trade database namely EBOPS, WTO service list and different CPC version. Authors try to project growth in total trade of energy services and evaluate competitive advantages in energy services among major economics like China, India, Japan and Korea. Authors try to map degree of energy service trade liberalization under three regional agreements (BCIM, BIMSTEC 1, ASEAN 4) through constructing a Hoekman (1995) index chart that showing existence of limitation on Market access and national treatment within this sector. So Primary objective of our study is to identify different commitments level for liberalization of energy services and evaluate similarities in commitment pattern of energy services by performing cluster analysis. Authors also evaluate potentialities of energy service trade among three regional blocks and to identify various challenges faced in energy service trade