The WTO and World Bank announced the joint programme of capacity building and technical assistance at the Public Forum in September 2024. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the World Bank's Chief Economist, Indermit Gill, said developing economies' ability to attain economic and development objectives increasingly rests on their capacity to leverage opportunities associated with services trade and related policies.

It consists of six components:

• Competitiveness Diagnostic Dashboard, aimed at helping developing economies identify their strengths and weaknesses in services trade as well as their needs
• Good regulatory practices to assist economies in facilitating trade
• Export promotion strategies, identifying best practices in developing economies on export promotion based on case studies
• Analysis of services trade policies through the Services Trade Restriction Index (STRI) and the identification of services trade costs
• Transparency initiative to help developing economies establish non-binding lists of core services trade measures, with a view to facilitating their engagement in discussions and negotiations, and improving the business climate
• Services trade statistics by organizing workshops and scaling-up data collection efforts by assisting with surveys

The workstreams of the TS4D initiative seek to help address the five broad challenges identified in the TS4D report, namely:

1. addressing data gaps in services trade
2. supporting the greater participation of developing and least developed economies in policy discussion on trade in services
3. strengthening regulatory frameworks and institutions
4. promoting a more diversified services export basket, notably those delivered digitally
5. addressing key supply-side constraints and improve the services related skills of workers