NEW DELHI, December 12: India has offered to allow foreign banks to open 12 branches instead of eight as at present, but there was no concrete offer on opening up the insurance sector.

The offer on opening up the banking sector was in line with RBI directive to allow upto 15 branches for foreign banks as part of the Indian government's financial sector reforms, an official spokesman quoting Indian negotiators at Geneva said here on Friday.

The offer was "a conditional but slightly improved" offer as the new round of intensive negotiations by 132 countries began in Geneva to conclude a deal on opening up financial services trade by the 4.30 am first deadline on Saturday, the spokesperson said.

The conditional offer, he said, was a slight improvement over the earlier one as India has now agreed to bind increased number of branches of foreign banks in the country.

Though India has agreed to allow more foreign bank branches into the Indian market, it has not made any change in present market system drastically, the spokesperson said, adding no new offer was made on liberalising its huge insurance market and the securities dealing.

Trade negotiators in Geneva were quoted as saying the fate of the pact to open up the mega-billion dollar global financial services industry, however, rested firmly in the hands of Washington.

Negotiations were on since the early nineties to put banking, insurance and securities dealing under open trade rules of WTO which are reinforced with a tough dispute settlement system.

AFP adds from Geneva: After a brief informal session to take stock of progress in bilateral discussions overnight, the World Trade Organisation members went into another round of bilateral talks, agreeing to meet again to see if they were any closer to a deal, sources close to the discussions said. European Union foreign trade ministers had been due to meet here during the morning, but put the meeting back to late afternoon to give more time for the bilateral discussions.

US Trade Representative spokesman Jay Ziegler said late on Thursday that there had been "substantial progress" in the past week, "but we are not at the point where we have seen long-standing concerns addressed."

A US source said after Friday morning's session that there had been a "handful"of countries who improved their offers overnight, but that while these improvements were "helpful" there was still no deal. Bilateral talks continued late into the night in an effort to avoid a repeat of 1995's failure, when the deal foundered at the last minute because the United State s was not satisfied with other countries' market opening offers, notably from Asia and Latin America.

The agreement would open up trade in banking, insurance and brokerage. The amounts involved are huge. It is estimated that 1.2 trillion dollars are traded on foreign exchange markets daily, and total world banking assets are put at 20 trillion dollars.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.