5th China Forum on Standardization of Trade in Services

In 2015 APEC took a major decision to ratchet trade in services to higher priority on the APEC agenda. That same year, in order to engage closely with the new APEC agenda, regional services industry groups came together to form the Asia-Pacific Services Coalition, the world’s largest coalition of services industries.

CCPIT is a participant, along with the China Association for Trade in Services and we held our second annual meeting in Beijing.

The following year APEC announced a detailed APEC Services Competitiveness Roadmap to be implemented over the period to 2025. It sets out concrete actions to facilitate services trade and investment and enhance the competitiveness of the services sector across APEC economies. Concrete targets were also established to increase the share of the services sector in domestic production, to increase the openness of services markets, to increase the rate of growth of trade in services and to increase the region’s share in world services trade.

The Mid-Term Review of this Services Competitiveness Roadmap takes place this year. The Asia Pacific Services Coalition and the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) are leading the way in providing business input and my purpose today is to share with you the key findings of the business research. As the next slide shows, the services share of Gross Domestic Production has been growing and now accounts on average for nearly ¾ of APEC economy GDP; this is higher than world average (OECD/WTO Trade in Value-Added TiVA data base 2018).

Jane Drake-Brockmans presentation