At the demand of the ENP-S countries, the MEDSTAT IV project organises a workshop with the ENP-s countries to discuss specific surveys that may help better assessing the importance of the international flows of services. Asymmetry exercises on trade in services already took place at the occasion of two sub-regional workshops in January 2018 in Tunis (workshop in French) and Athens (workshop in English). These exercises, that compare individual flows of imports and exports between countries, are instrumental for assessing the quality of the statistics produced on Trade in services and for identifying where improvement may be brought.

The main finding made during these two events was that these statistics on Trade in services are not very developed in the ENP-S countries and this despite new international recommendations. The international experts facilitating the two events concluded that the development of these statistics necessarily involves conducting surveys at the level of the national providers of services.

The purpose of this workshop will be to follow-up on the recommendations made after the asymmetry exercises and to discuss the development of surveys allowing to break down the balance of payments account into 12 posts such as suggested by the Manual on International Trade in Services Statistics (MSCIS 2010).

This workshop will be attended by two representatives from each of the nine ENP-S countries and facilitated by two specialists: one on foreign trade statistics and one on the compilation of the balance of payments.

The MEDSTAT IV project provides expertise and technical support to promote the harmonisation of statistics in line with EU and international standards in 6 domains: business register and business, trade and balance of payments, energy, labour market, migration and transport. It follows on the previous phase implemented over the period 2010-2013.

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