As noted in the Trade in Services for Development co-publication, developing economies often suffer from a lack of information – and a lack of analytical capacity - regarding national policies that may be affected by an economy's commitments in various sectors and modes of supply. Informed policy-making in services needs to be underpinned by credible data, not only in terms of services trade flows but also as regards services trade policies.

Comprehensive and comparable data on government measures that affect trade in services are critical to improve policy formulation and to facilitate participation in international negotiations and discussions on trade in services.

The STPD and the STRI cover 140 economies and 34 service sectors. Through the workstreams, the World Bank and the WTO seek to further expand coverage so as to cover more developing economies.

Background

The STPD provides regulatory information on on a broad range of government measures affecting services supply in each economy through the various modes of supply.

The regulatory information is displayed in accordance with the classification of policies jointly developed by the WTO and the World Bank. There are five broad categories:

1. conditions on market entry
2. conditions on operations
3. measures affecting competition
4. administrative procedures and regulatory transparency
5. miscellaneous measures not covered by the previous four categories

Based on the regulatory information collected, the Restrictions of the economy's policies in each of the subsectors is quantified via the STRI – an index that quantifies an economy's applied policies on trade in services on a scale from 0 (fully open) to 1 (completely closed to foreign services or service suppliers).

Capacity building and technical assistance

The STPD and STRI contain critical information to help developing economies and development partners formulate services trade policies and analyze key trends.

The World Bank and the WTO regularly use the information in their technical assistance and capacity building activities. The information on measures applied by governments is a key input to other components of the workstreams, such as those relating to transparency, competitiveness and good regulatory practices.

Economies currently participating in the STPD and STRI data collection exercises include:

• Cambodia
• Costa Rica
• El Salvador
• Honduras
• Nicaragua
• Panama