【英文】WTO报告： 2019年世界贸易报告WORLD TRADE REPORT 2019 The future of services trade（232P）

英文研究报告 2019年10月17日 07:42 管理员

Services have already transformed national economies on a massive scale. Not only are services indispensable to running our increasingly complex and sophisticated industrial economies – from logistics, to finance, to informatics – but the services sector is the fastest growing economic segment in its own right – from business services, to healthcare, to entertainment. Services generate more than two-thirds of economic output, attract over two-thirds of foreign direct investment, and provide almost two-thirds of jobs in developing countries and four-fifths in developed ones. Services now seem to be transforming international trade in similar ways. Although they still only account for one fifth of cross-border trade, they are the fastest growing sector (WTO, 2017). While the value of goods exports has increased at a modest 1 per cent annually since 2011, the value of commercial services exports has expanded at three times that rate, 3 per cent (see Figure A.1).

The services share of world trade has grown from just 9 per cent in 1970 to over 20 per cent today – and this report forecasts that services could account for up to one-third of world trade by 2040.1 This would represent a 50 per cent increase in the share of services in global trade in just two decades. There is a common perception that globalization is slowing down. But if the growing wave of services trade is factored in – and not just the modest increases in merchandise trade – then globalization may be poised to speed up again. 2. Digitalized services: the nontradable becomes hyper-tradable The main driver of this shift is technological change. Thanks to digitalization, the internet and low-cost telecommunications, many services sectors that were once non-tradable – because they had to be delivered face-to-face in a fixed location – have become highly tradable – because they can now be delivered remotely over long distances. Of course, some services, such as taxis, hotels or hair salons, will continue to be delivered locally and require a physical presence (although companies such as Uber and Airbnb demonstrate how even these sectors can be radically transformed by new internetbased business models).