TiSSTAT: an Information System for Compiling Trade in Services Statistics Through Enterprise Surveys

Trade in services boosts economic growth by maintaining income, productivity, and resilience while advancing sustainable development. Innovative enterprise surveys and online tools such as TiSSTAT help bridge data gaps and streamline methodologies, enabling more detailed, transparent trade statistics for effective policy-making. International trade in services is crucial for economic growth, supporting income, productivity, and resilience. Strengthening service linkages boosts development, with services trade playing a key role in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. However, there remain considerable data gaps in trade in services statistics. Enterprise and establishment surveys are among the most important sources of trade in services statistics and offer the potential to fill data gaps relating to breakdowns by partner and mode of supply. The Trade in Services Statistics Information System (TiSSTAT), developed at United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), leverages the potential of online surveys and helps to overcome the challenges related to them. This technical paper presents an information system with three main elements: a questionnaire, a set of methodologies that go together with the questionnaire, and a multi-user application that helps reduce response burden and the cost of surveying, while supporting statistical authorities in the compilation of reliable, transparent and detailed trade in services statistics.