Services are increasingly embedded across the economy as inputs into agriculture, manufacturing and other services. This process, often referred to as servicification, is being accelerated by digitalization and new technologies, changing how firms produce, trade and create value.
Understanding these changes requires more than data on aggregate services trade flows. Policymakers need evidence on how services trade and policy affect firms, workers and sectors across the economy, including outcomes such as exports, productivity, employment and wages.
UNCTAD’s report Measuring servicification and impacts of services trade and policy provides a practical framework for combining international sources with national data, including administrative and firm-level information, to answer such policy questions.
A central message is that developing countries often already possess valuable information that could be used more effectively for services trade policy. Business registers and censuses, tax records, enterprise and labour surveys, transaction-level trade data, investment information and other administrative sources can help reveal how services are produced, used and traded, and how trade and policy changes affect firms and workers.
Linking these datasets, while protecting confidentiality, can generate much richer evidence for policy design and evaluation than aggregate trade statistics alone.
What can this report help policymakers analyse?
The report shows how existing data can be used to examine questions such as:
- How can servicification be measured, including the use of services as inputs in manufacturing, agriculture and other sectors?
- Which firms and workers participate in and benefit from services trade, and how do outcomes vary across different types of firms and workers?
- How are services trade and policy associated with economic outcomes, including exports, productivity, employment, wages, firm entry and exit, and participation in value chains?
- What national datasets can be combined to answer these questions, including trade transactions, business registers, tax records, employment data, enterprise surveys and investment information?
- How can governments assess policy impacts, by linking information on trade and regulatory changes with firm-, worker- and sector-level outcomes?
From policy questions to evidence
Different policy questions require different combinations of data. For example, analysing how a change in services regulation affects firm performance may require combining information on the policy change with business-register, tax or enterprise data. Examining employment or wage outcomes from services trade may require linking firm-level trade information with labour-market or employer–employee data. Assessing outcomes for microenterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises can require combining trade information with firm characteristics.
The report therefore encourages countries to start from the policy question, identify the information needed to answer it and then determine which existing datasets can be linked to provide that evidence.
The publication complements UNCTAD's 2025 Primer on data for trade in services and development policies. The first Primer maps the main sources of services trade data and where to find them; this second publication focuses on how these and other national data can be combined and used to measure servicification and assess the impacts of services trade and policy.
Together, the two publications aim to help countries move from simply measuring services trade flows towards understanding who gains, through which channels and under what policy conditions.
Objective
- Present and discuss the findings of the UNCTAD report Measuring servicification and impacts of services trade and policy
- Foster dialogue among policymakers, experts and researchers on evidence-based approaches to services trade policy
- Identify priorities for international cooperation and capacity-building to strengthen the use of data for trade policymaking in developing economies.
Participation
In-person participation
Mandates
This work responds to the Geneva Consensus in particular paragraph 80.15 which calls on UNCTAD “to improve the collection, accessibility and use of trade in services data to inform policy decisions, to enable all, particularly women and microenterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises, to leverage and benefit from trade in services and support the development of services-led trade export strategies.”
It also follows up on the twelfth session of the MYEM, held on 15-16 April 2026, which encouraged UNCTAD to further strengthen its work on trade in services for development, including by improving the use of services data in trade policymaking.
