Asia-Pacific Puts Services Trade at Centre of Growth and Jobs Through TS4D Talks

Launched in September 2024 by the WTO and the World Bank, TS4D provides a platform for knowledge sharing, technical assistance and capacity building.

Services trade is becoming a bigger part of Asia-Pacific's development conversation, with governments looking at how industries such as transport, finance, telecommunications and professional services can create better jobs and help businesses become more productive. A regional conference in Manila on 28–29 September brought the Trade in Services for Development (TS4D) initiative to Asia and the Pacific for the first time, giving trade officials and other stakeholders a platform to examine what those opportunities could mean for their economies. Jointly organized by the World Trade Organization, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank Group, the event brought together trade officials from 25 economies across the region.

Looking Beyond Higher Export Numbers

The development value of services trade depends on more than how much a country sells overseas, a point raised by Arsenio Balisacan, Secretary of the Philippines' Department of Economy, Planning, and Development, in his opening keynote. He asked whether expanding services exports could raise productivity across the economy and deliver good jobs to a broader range of workers and firms, linking that outcome to the types of services that grow, their connections with other industries and people's ability to participate. His remarks put a practical question at the centre of the discussion: how can governments turn export growth into benefits that reach beyond the businesses already competing internationally?

WTO Deputy Director-General Johanna Hill described services as increasingly central to growth, employment and international trade, challenging their treatment as supporting activities in development strategies focused primarily on goods. Developing economies have significant opportunities in this shift, she said, but turning that potential into a workable policy agenda can be difficult. The TS4D initiative offers support for governments facing those challenges, helping them identify the conditions needed for services trade to contribute more fully to development.

Giving Governments Tools to Choose Reforms

Launched in September 2024 by the WTO and the World Bank, TS4D provides a platform for knowledge sharing, technical assistance and capacity building. Its resources include a services trade competitiveness dashboard, a policy database, work on good regulatory practices, lessons on export promotion and statistical support. Balisacan stressed that these tools become valuable when they help governments ask more precise questions and develop a sequence of reforms they can implement and assess, connecting the analysis of trade performance with decisions about what needs to change.

Gonzalo Varela, the World Bank Group's Practice Manager for Trade Policy and Facilitation, explained the wider economic importance of those decisions through services that other industries depend on every day. Transport, telecommunications, finance and professional services feed into production across the economy, meaning that opening them to trade and competition can raise productivity and support better jobs in the businesses using them. He described TS4D as a way to help the World Bank Group work with its clients to decide which reforms should come first and carry them through implementation.

Building Regional Cooperation and Practical Skills

ADB Vice-President for Sectors and Themes Wempi Saputra presented services trade as both a source of competitiveness and a way to expand opportunities for people. His remarks highlighted Asia's shift towards service industries and the sustained support required to create an environment in which services trade can grow. Regional cooperation has a practical role in that process, allowing economies to align common rules, share reform costs and secure gains that individual national efforts may struggle to achieve.

Hosted by the ADB, the conference covered services trade competitiveness, good regulatory practices, digital services and services export promotion strategies, giving participants room to exchange policy approaches and best practices. A training activity delivered by the WTO and World Bank after the conference introduced government officials to analytical tools developed under TS4D, extending the discussions into practical learning about resources available to support policy decisions.