New GATIS Report Urges Inclusive Growth As Global Trade In Services Faces Gaps, Barriers

BEIJING, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Sep, 2025) The Global Alliance for Trade in Services (GATIS) officially released a report titled “Trend on Inclusive Development of Global Trade in Services 2025” at the 2025 Global Entrepreneurs Summit on Trade in Services held in Beijing.

As per GATIS, against the backdrop of profound changes in the global economic, geopolitical, technological, and security systems, trade in services, with its higher growth rate and more efficient resource utilization, has become a key engine of global economic development.

In 2024, global trade volume reached a record high of approximately $33 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 3.7%%. Of which, trade in services grew by 9%, around $500 billion more than 2023, becoming the Primary driving force of overall world trade expansion.

GATIS President Jiang Zengwei highlighted the dual nature of the current global landscape of trade in services in his remarks. He noted that digital technologies have powerfully enabled trade in services, driving sustained high-speed growth and making it a core engine of global economic development and innovation. At the same time, he warned that factors such as unilateralism, geopolitical conflicts, digital divides, trade protectionism, supply chain restructuring, and differences in development foundations are creating uncertainty, instability, and imbalance in the sector, CEN reported.

Jiang emphasized that developing economies, small and medium enterprises, and vulnerable groups—including women—still face significant gaps in fair participation and equitable access to benefits. “Promoting inclusive development in trade in services is an urgent necessity to address current challenges and achieve balanced global economic and trade growth,” he pinpointed.

The report, grounded in a global perspective, systematically explains the definition and connotation of “inclusive development.” Aiming at inclusive development of trade in services in the context of digital transformation, it objectively analyzes the latest trends and structural changes in inclusive development of trade in services, analyzes the main affecting factors affecting inclusive development of trade in services, explores the establishment of an evaluation system for inclusive development of trade in services, and, based on an analysis of the main challenges facing inclusive development of trade in services, offers targeted recommendations across four dimensions: policies, industries, rules and promotion measures.

Echoing the report’s focus on technology-driven inclusion, Dorothy Tembo, Deputy Executive Director of the International Trade Centre (ITC), pointed out that trade in services has become a vital pillar of the global economy. Tembo highlighted that the growth of trade in services not only strengthens the sector itself but also reshapes global trade patterns and creates opportunities for a wide range of market participants, particularly small and medium enterprises.

She emphasized that leveraging digital technologies must avoid fragmented or isolated approaches to fully support inclusive development.

In line with efforts to harness digital technologies and artificial intelligence to advance services and digital trade, GATIS also announced new initiatives in the areas of digital economy and aviation, aimed at consolidating industry resources and enhancing the alliance’s capacity to support development in these sectors.

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