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National Workshop on Statistics of International Trade in Services held in Islamabad on 2&3 May 2007
National Workshop on Statistics of International Trade in Services was held on 2-3 May 2007, in Islamabad. It was jointly organized by the Ministry of Commerce & the Training wing of the Federal Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the Statistics Division of the World Trade Organization, Geneva. Forty eight Government officials belonging to relevant departments attended the workshop. The participants were statisticians, trade negotiators and trade/economic analysts and heads of agencies responsible for reporting data to the State Bank of Pakistan. Dr. Salman Shah, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Finance and Dr. Rozina Tufail, Parliamentary Secretary for Statistics attended the opening session. Mr. Andreas Maurer Chief of International Trade Statistics Section and Mr.Josecelyn Magdeleine, Statistical Officer were the WTO Secretariat resource persons.
Recent studies conducted to assist Pakistan in analysing impact of making commitments at the WTO and to determine its export interests had highlighted the lack of statistics for services sectors at disaggregated levels. The objective of the workshop was to improve the participant's knowledge of, trade in services statistics and links with GATS; underlying methodology for measuring trade in services; sources and uses of statistics for analysis/assessment; and compilation practices.
Presentations were made on the GATS and recent developments in trade in services, the recent achievements in measuring international trade in services (the conceptual framework), the trade classifications of negotiators and statisticians, the major statistical tools to assess countries' trade potential and on compilation practices for producing trade in services statistics. FBS and the State Bank of Pakistan also made relevant presentations with respect to statistics on international trade in services currently available (covering resident/non-resident trade in services only). See report for more details
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