STATISTICS
Information on capacity-building activities on trade in services statistics
The Task Force on Statistics of International Trade in Services provides technical assistance to statisticians of statistical offices and central banks as well as other government officials. This addresses the request of the United Nations Statistical Commission that “all relevant international agencies and the United Nations regional commissions, especially members of the Task Force, […] contribute to the implementation of the Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services 2010.”
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It also echoes the December 2005 WTO Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration, Annex C paragraph10 that states that WTO, inter alia, should provide targeted technical assistance. “Such assistance should be provided on, inter alia, compiling and analyzing statistical data on trade in services, [and] assessing interests in and gains from services trade....”.
All international agencies (Eurostat, IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, UNSD, UNWTO and WTO) which are members of the Task Force organize or participate in technical assistance efforts. Since 2011 the WTO Secretariat was asked by the Task Force to act as a focal point in the coordination of these efforts. The aim is in particular to:
- improve transparency of international and regional organisation’s technical assistance activities in the field of trade in services statistics and avoid overlapping or duplicating projects by establishing a transparent strategy for countries implementing the recommendations of the Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services 2010;
- maintain a list of experts available to provide more hands-on and long-term technical assistance or participate in capacity building projects;
- review existing material to analyse and identify possible synergies or improvements in the way technical assistance is provided to producers and users of statistics; and
- explore new ways of doing technical assistance, for example through the use of ECampus.
Measuring Trade in Services — A training module
Report on the coordination of trade in services statistics technical assistance
ECampus project of UNCTAD and WTO on trade in services statistics (coming soon)
WTO Trade-related technical assistance
For more information on trade in services statistics technical assistance: [email protected].