Services provide intermediate inputs to all economic sectors: primary, industrial, and even the tertiary sector. For example, automated crop monitoring services are increasingly relevant for agriculture, software services are key for the automotive industry, and telecommunication services are necessary for mobile and digital financial services. This increased use, production, and export of services embedded in all sectors is the servicification of the economy and trade. As such, the performance of the whole economy and trade is related to the effectiveness of services inputs. In developing countries, services account for two-thirds of total productivity growth. In Brazil, where UNCTAD undertook a case-study research on services value-added, services accounted for 17 per cent of direct exports and 48 per cent of value-added exports in 2015. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development reflects this importance of services in several goals, for example by placing transport, ICT, and financial services as conditions to achieve goal 9 on industry and innovation. The economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic calls, with more urgency, for the use of servicification to promote export diversification, upgrading, and a robust economic recovery. Servicification and its effects have not been sufficiently discussed in policy debates, including on trade policy. This is because some servicification-related concepts break some traditional analytical approaches, and also due to insufficient data and information on its relevance.
This short course addresses this gap by covering servicification concepts, its relevance, and how this can be addressed in policymaking, including in trade policy and regulatory frameworks. It will also discuss the strategic importance of services value-added to the economy and international trade. This short course will provide delegates the opportunity to deepen their understanding of this strategic importance and of the ways through which services value-added is incorporated in economy and trade. It will shed light on the significance of servicification, including utilizing UNCTAD’s guidebook on the methodology to measure services value-added, in addition to gaining knowledge on the services-related policy, regulatory and institutional frameworks necessary to use services value-added in exports to pursue development goals.
