Market access: one of the basic concepts in international trade. It describes the extent to which a good or a service can compete with locally-made products in another market. In the WTO framework it as a legalistic term outlining the government-imposed conditions under which a product may enter a country under non-discriminatory conditions. Market access in the WTO sense is expressed through border measures, i.e. tariffs and non- tariff measures, in the case of goods, and regulations inside the market in the case of services. Traditionally, multilateral trade policy has sought to make market access predictable and, preferably, to make it more liberal. This is done through the reduction of tariffs and "binding" them at the lower level. A binding is a contractual obligation not to raise the tariff above the levels specified in the schedules of concessions. The removal of market access impediments in the form of non-tariff measures is more complex since some of them may escape precise legal definition. The rapid growth of trade in services and the process of globalization have drawn attention to market access impediments inside the border. Of the WTO agreements, the GATS has gone furthest in seeking to deal with trade-restrictive regulatory measures, but other instruments, such as the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures have also extended the reach of trade rules into the domestic domain. The coverage of these rules is, however, patchy, and there are calls for the insertion of competition policy into the WTO system. In competition frameworks, market access is described as the ability to compete effectively in a market. Its aim is the regulation or removal of anti-competitive private conduct and regulation. A merging of these two market access concepts, if it turned out to be feasible, could make a powerful contribution to the furthering of the international contestability of markets. Access for foreign direct investment can also influence market access. One school of thought holds that market access is too limiting a concept, and that it should be replaced by the more embracing concept of market presence. See also equality of competitive opportunity, market access for agriculture, market access for services, national treatment and most- favoured-nation treatment.