Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services

10 Personal, cultural, and recreational services 
 
10.1  Audiovisual and related services 
 
 
10.2  Other personal, cultural, and recreational services 
   10.2.1 
Education 
services 
   10.2.2 
Health 
services 
   10.2.3 
Other 
 
11 Government services, n.i.e. 
 
 
11.1  Embassies and consulates 
 
 
11.2  Military units and agencies  
 
11.3  Other government services 
 
 
 
 
 
Memorandum items 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1 Freight transportation on merchandise, valued on a transaction basis 
 
1.1  Sea freight  
 
 
1.2  Air freight  
 
 
1.3  Other freight  
 
1.4  Space freight  
 
1.5  Rail freight  
 
 
1.6  Road freight  
 
 
1.7  Inland waterway freight  
 
1.8  Pipeline freight  
2 Travel 
 
   
 
 
2.1  Expenditure on goods  
 
2.2  Expenditure on accommodation and food and beverage serving services 
 
2.3  All other travel expenditure  
3 Gross 
insurance 
premiums  
 
3.1  Gross premiums––life insurance 
 
 
3.2  Gross premiums––freight insurance 
 
 
3.3  Gross premiums––other direct insurance 
4  Gross insurance claims 
 
 
4.1  Gross claims––life insurance 
 
 
4.2  Gross claims––freight insurance 
 
 
4.3  Gross claims––other direct insurance 
5  Financial intermediation services indirectly measured (FISIM) 
6  Financial services including FISIM 
 
7 Merchanting gross flows 
 
8  Audiovisual transactions 
a
 
 
a
 
This item consists of a range of services and other transactions relating to audiovisual activities. Included are services 
that may be included in either audiovisual services or royalties and license fees, and also the acquisition and disposal of 
non-produced, non-financial assets relating to audiovisual activities, such as patents, copyrights, trademarks and 
franchises. 
 

---

 
33 
3.28.  The GATS GNS/W/120 list explicitly excludes 
some services that are supplied by Governments - those 
that are supplied on a non-commercial basis and not in 
competition with one or more service suppliers.
43
 These 
services are included in government services, not 
included elsewhere, within BPM5 and EBOPS.  
3.29.  Included in GNS/W/120 are the distribution 
services of wholesale trade and retailing. Following 
BPM5, these services are not identified in EBOPS. In 
the 1993 SNA, wholesalers and retailers are entities that 
purchase and resell goods with no or only minimal 
processing (in the form of cleaning, packaging and so 
forth). They supply a service to producers and 
consumers of goods by storing, displaying and 
delivering a selection of goods in convenient locations, 
thus making them easy to buy. Such services, with the 
exception of merchanting services (see para. 3.123 
below and box 6), are not part of the international 
services transactions described in BPM5 because the 
margins that represent those distribution services are 
included in the free on board (f.o.b.) values of the goods 
to which they relate. 
3.30.  In the 1993 SNA, the purchaser’s price is the 
amount paid by the purchaser, excluding any deductible 
value-added tax or similar deductible tax, in order to 
take delivery of a good or a service at the time and place 
required by the purchaser. It includes any transport 
charges that are paid separately by the purchaser to take 
delivery at the required time and place (irrespective of 
who provides these services) and also any taxes paid by 
the purchaser (including export taxes). 
3.31.  For services, the concept of market price in 
BPM5 is equivalent to the concept of purchaser’s price 
in the 1993 SNA, because no wholesale, retail or 
transport distribution costs are involved. 
3.32.  However, for goods, BPM5 identifies the pricing 
level as f.o.b. at the border of the exporting country. In 
general, the f.o.b. price will not necessarily be the same 
as the purchaser’s price because the f.o.b. price may 
include separately invoiced distribution costs (wholesale 
and/or retail margins as well as transportation costs to 
the border of the exporting country). Further, the 
purchaser’s price will cover costs that take the goods to 
the purchaser’s choice of location, which may be beyond 
the customs frontier. Therefore, those distribution costs, 
which are separately identified services in the 1993 SNA 
                                                 
43
  See annex V, part I, article I. 
framework, are not separately identified in the balance 
of payments framework.  
3.33.  The one exception to this is the special case of 
merchanting services (see para. 3.123 below and box 6), 
where goods are purchased in one country for sale in a 
second country by a resident of a third country. As 
discussed above, where goods are traded between two 
countries with no third party involved, the value of 
wholesale and retail services is included in the value of 
the goods. This special case arises because there are no 
goods flows in the country of residence of the merchant; 
thus, these services would not be included at all if not 
specifically identified.  
3.34.  It is recognized that it will not be possible for all 
compilers to immediately develop statistics at the 
detailed component level specified in EBOPS. 
Therefore, the highest priority is given to the 
development of statistics on international trade in 
services at the level described in BPM5. Following this, 
compilers should work towards disaggregation of these 
components to the level specified in EBOPS, but in an 
order that reflects the economic significance of the 
various services components to their economies. Third, 
compilation of the memorandum items should be carried 
out where the data are available as a by-product of the 
compilation of the related EBOPS components, or where 
their importance to users has been identified.  
3.35.  Although more frequent data would be useful for 
a range of analytical purposes, the present Manual 
recommends that EBOPS-level data and the 
memorandum items be produced on an annual basis, 
consistent with and reconcilable to quarterly data at a 
more aggregated level.