To all ESC members:

At our meeting this past Monday, Carol Balassa (USTR) told us that she would
be sending to us for comment a matrix/concordance of the commercial
activities and commercial descriptions that the ESC provided the USG this
past spring (our illustrative lists) with the system used by the WTO to
classify services (the Provisional Central Product Classification [CPC] and
the GATS' own classification document W/120.  That matrix is attached below.
Also attached is a document that describes the meaning of the various CPC
classifications, so that you may interpret more accurately the matrix
prepared by the USG.  The materials largely were prepared by the ITC, which
has done yeoman's work and deserves our thanks.
The purpose of these materials is to see where our activities fall within
the WTO GATS classification system.

The immediate task for us is to try to answer various questions the USG
interagency team has about the types of activities we have told them our
sector does.  These questions are in boxes along the left-hand margin of the
text.  They often ask us for clarifications about what we have said we do
and to provide specific examples.  Beyond that, if there are elements on
which you have questions/comments, we should give that feedback back to
USTR.

The ESC Executive Committee would appreciate it if all members would look at
the questions and send us any guidance they can on issues of relevance to
their companies/associations.  We also would ask that the Chairs of the
various Working Groups (hydrocarbons, electricity, technology, and
renewables) particularly look at the document to see if they need to get
their Working groups together to review the questions and our responses.

Carol noted that these same documents will be submitted to the ISACs for
comment.  For those of you who are on the ISACs, it will help Carol and her
team if we can note where there might be a duplication in the comments
provided by the ESC and various ISAC members who also are ESC members.

Please direct all comments/questions to Bob Fisher at Hills & Company.  His
phone number is 202 822-4700.  His e-mail address is
"rcfisher@hillsandco.com".  Carol has asked for our comments by September 1.
In order to meet her deadline, we need to have comments to Bob by August 30.


With thanks to all for your assistance - Joe Hillings

 <<USG MATRIX WITH INDUSTRY QUESTIONS 8-11-00.doc>>   <<RELEVANT CPC
DESCRIPTIONSaug09.doc>>




 - USG MATRIX WITH INDUSTRY QUESTIONS 8-11-00.doc
 - RELEVANT CPC DESCRIPTIONSaug09.doc