The fifth meeting of the Informal Working Group examined how services can act as shock absorbers or bottlenecks, and what linked firm-level and administrative data can reveal about resilience. It highlighted that exposure does not necessarily imply vulnerability: outcomes also depend on factors such as supplier concentration, substitutability and customization.
The sixth meeting will take this discussion from the firm level to the economy-wide level. Input-output (IO) and multi-regional input-output (MRIO) data can show how services are used directly and indirectly in production, where foreign services inputs enter production networks, and how much exposure is hidden upstream rather than visible in direct trade statistics.
The meeting will focus on what such data can reveal about services exposure and the scope for substitution, where their limits lie, and which related indicators are also useful for describing a country’s services trade and servicification.
The meeting will address the following guiding questions:
- Which IO/MRIO indicators are most informative for identifying direct and indirect exposure to foreign services inputs?
- How far can existing data distinguish exposure from dependence or vulnerability?
- How comparable are these measures across international databases?
- Which indicators are useful for country-level analysis of services trade and servicification?
What is UNCTAD’s Informal Working Group on Data for Services, Trade and Development Policies?
The Informal Working Group on Data for Services, Trade and Development Policies was established following the recommendations of the ninth session of the Multi-Year Expert Meeting (MYEM) on Trade, Services and Development. The Working Group seeks to identify services-trade data gaps, share good practice examples of data collection, identify relevant data sources and showcase innovative ways to use existing data for policymaking.
The first four meetings of the Working Group focused on data needs and good practices in services-trade data collection and use, including the potential of alternative and administrative data sources. The fifth meeting will build on this work by focusing on a specific policy question: how can services-trade, firm-level and administrative data help policymakers assess the role of services in supply-chain shocks and resilience, including by identifying services that act as shock absorbers, bottlenecks or sources of dependency.
Mandates
The meeting 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.”
The meeting also follows up on the twelfth session of the MYEM, held on 15 and 16 April 2026, which encouraged UNCTAD to strengthen its work on services data and analyse the effects of external shocks on supply-chain resilience through a servicification lens.
Nomundari Baatar is a consultant with the Economic Research and Development Impact Department's Data Division of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). She supports the Bank’s analytical work using ADB’s multiregional input–output (MRIO) tables on global value chains, trade in value-added, structural transformation, and their environmental impacts across developing Asia. She holds a Master's in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Economics from New York University. Her experience spans the design and implementation of data platforms, systems, and analysis across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors in the United States, Mongolia, and Viet Nam.
