The World Trade Oranization (WTO) has come to play all important role for a siginficant number of coutries (currently 150) negotiating financial services liberalization under the General Agreement oil Trade in Services (GATS). Nonetheless, despite these significant advances, the GATS is far from being complete. Substantial liberalization is still pending ill a considerable: group of member countries. This leads to regulatory deficiencies that contribute to a suboptimal provision of financial services. Among tire many aspects needing improvement, is a strengthening of GATS provisions to guatantee greater market access and NT to foreign service providers. The analysis of the scheduled commitments and MFN exemptions undertaken by the 30 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) members points to a great variability in the depth of commitments affecting financial services foreign direct investment (FDI). In particular, entry, establishment and competition of foreign banks is determined through market access and NT limitations under the GATS framework. Given the current stalemate ill the negotiation process of the GATS, improvements in the current liberalization of framework will come from the combination of several processes such as unilateral opening; regionalism; pressures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (through their lending mechanisms) and the OECD, rather than under the aegis of the WTO.
