Monitoring services trade policy changes in 2022

Global services trade regulations showed dynamic changes in 2022, with progressive liberalisation efforts counterbalanced by new restrictions.

In 2022, services trade continued to recover, showing an 18% yearon-year increase in the second quarter of 2022 helped by increasing demand and the lifting of travel restrictions (WTO, 2022[1]) By the third quarter of 2022, the volume of global trade in goods and services was over 7% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2019, although the recovery was slower in services trade than in goods trade (OECD, 2022[2]).

Against this background, the global regulatory environment for services trade, as measured by the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI), was dynamic in 2022 with an increase in the volume of regulatory changes compared to 2021

The STRI demonstrates substantial services liberalisation efforts in 2022 underpinned by governments' actions to improve business operations in domestic markets, advance regulatory transparency, and ease remaining hurdles on business travel after the COVID-19 pandemic (Figure 1). The positive changes are counterbalanced by new services trade barriers introduced in 2022, including limitations affecting foreign companies’ ability to provide services locally, limitations on the movement of service providers, and increased control on foreign investments particularly through tightening or broadening of investment screening mechanisms.

Across all major services sectors, the average cumulative increase in trade restrictiveness was five times higher in 2022 than the year before.

Sectors most affected by new restrictions include some audio-visual services, computer services as well as physical infrastructure services.

Sectors most affected by liberalisation efforts are professional services (for instance, architecture and engineering) as well as some transport and logistics services.

These findings demonstrate the importance of renewing efforts to open markets and promote rules-based services trade. Annex A provides a chronological overview of policy changes adopted by countries that affected services trade between 2014 and 2022.

Figure

Trade liberalisations, 2021 to 2022 Trade restrictions, 2021 to 2022

Trade liberalisations and restrictions, 2020 to 2021

Note: Sum of all the positive (restrictions) and negatives changes (liberalisation) across all the measures over the period considered.

Source: OECD STRI database (http://oe.cd/stri-db).