NEW trade data measured in value-added terms shows that services – such as
logistics, design, and transportation - are far more important to global
commerce than they appear in traditional calculations of exports and
imports.
OECD data shows
that services represented 24% of total gross trade in 2009 in the 57 economies
analysed. But if measured according to the value added each time a service was
exported or imported within a global production chain, their share of overall
trade is significantly higher at 43%.
The findings emerge
from pioneering work by the OECD and WTO to provide a better picture of the
flows of goods and services within today’s globalised value chains.
The latest data
from the OECD/WTO Trade in Value-Added (TiVA) database increases the number of
economies analysed and provides statistics over a longer timeframe than in the
initial findings released in January 2013. They also reinforce how crucial
imports are for an economy to be a successful exporter, and demonstrate the
increasing pace of globalisation over the last two decades.
The estimates show
that the foreign content of exports has increased significantly in many
economies, as they seek competitive advantages through access to cheap and
efficient imports and by specialising in specific parts of the value chain.
Foreign content in the exports of the Czech and Republic, Hungary and Slovakia,
for instance, rose markedly from the mid 1990s to reach around 40% by 2009,
reflecting, in part, their specialisation in stages of the automotive and
electronic production chains of German companies. Similar changes also occurred
in Asian manufacturing. The foreign content of exports trebled in China and
doubled in Korea and Japan.
Services represent
more than half of total exports from the US, Britain, France, Germany and Italy
and nearly one-third from China. Even in manufactured goods, the contribution of
services rose by between 5% and 10% between 1995 and 2009 in many economies, to
reach one-third on average in the economies analysed.
Nearly half of all
the value that was added by French industries in producing transport equipment
originated in the service sector in 2009, up from one-third in 1995, according
to the new analysis.
The OECD argues
that reducing the many barriers to the import and export of services will boost
global trade, spur economic growth and create jobs.
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