International Trade in Services.pdf - DSpace at Khazar University

4 International Trade in Services
Figure 1.2. Trade, by Region, 2007
East Asia and Pacific
Europe and Central Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean
Middle East and North Africa
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Source: WDI Database.
0 20 40 60 80 100
percentage of GDP
low-income countries and high-income countries alike and 10 percent in middleincome
countries. The trade in services is an essential contribution to the economy
in several countries. It comprised, for example, more than 50 percent of GDP in 18
of the 159 countries and customs territories that reported data for 2005. It is striking
that all 18 countries, except Lebanon, Liberia, and Luxembourg, are islands.
Current data sources on the trade in services are improving, but still fail to
capture the true extent of trade in some sectors and countries. Although the trade
in goods represents the largest share in international flows, the trade data that
are available for developing countries by region (noted in figures 1.2 and 1.3),
including at the firm level, indicate that total trade and the trade in services were
sizable as a percentage of GDP in 2007 in several of the regions shown. Worker
remittances received as a share of GDP in 2007 are shown in figure 1.4 and are also
sizable, especially in the Middle East and North Africa and in South Asia.
The stakes for the liberalization of services are substantial in the current round
of multilateral trade negotiations, and this needs to be recognized especially
because most of the attention has thus far been focused on the liberalization of
agriculture and manufactured goods rather than services. Indeed, most service
liberalization around the world has been achieved unilaterally and has been
driven by a purely domestic agenda rather than a trade agenda.
Service trade liberalization does not stop and, often, does not even start at the
border. Governments might have single ministries for agriculture or industry, but
they have multiple technical ministries for transport, tourism, telecommunications,