The balance of payments of any state includes, along with other articles, trade in goods and services. The global market for goods and services is an integral part of international economic relations.
International trade in services is fundamentally different from trade in goods, and it consists in the following:
- goods are tangible and tangible; services are intangible;
- any product is visible, and the service is invisible;
- goods have the ability to be stored; storage services are not amenable to;
- trade in goods does not always have a connection with production, trade in services is connected with production almost always;
- the export of any goods involves the export of goods abroad from the customs territory without guarantees of return import, the export of services is the provision of services to non-residents, even if they are located in the customs territory of the country.
International trade in services precisely because of the invisibility and intangibility of the latter is called otherwise invisible import or export. The production of most services is combined, unlike goods, with their export, and requires a meeting between the buyer and seller, who have concluded a contract for the provision of this type of service.
But there are exceptions in this sphere of relations. For example, the global trade in consultant services can be quite tangible and tangible: printing a consultant's report, a program on a disk or flash drive, etc. As an example of a service that can be stored, you can give an example of an answering machine service, and a service that does not require direct interaction between the seller and the buyer can be a cash withdrawal in an automatic mode using a debit card.
International trade in services has some features compared to other types of trade:
- regulated internally by relevant articles of domestic law;
- services are produced and simultaneously subject to consumption;
- the state protects the production and sale of services to a much greater extent than goods of material production;
- international trade in services is closely interconnected with commodity trade and has an impact on it;
- unlike goods, not every type of service can be traded.
In international trade in services, a mandatory and key point is that at some stage there is a physical contact between the seller and the buyer of services. Only under this condition, a transaction of international sale of a certain type of service can take place.
Currently, there are several types of mechanisms for transactions in the field of trade in services:
- the buyer of the service, representing one country and being its resident, comes to the seller of the service. This mechanism is called customer service mobility.
- the seller of the service comes to the buyer who is a resident of another country. This view characterizes the mobility of the buyer.
- simultaneous mobility of both parties or mobility of a service. In this case, both parties either use the service at the same time, or meet in a third country, or the seller provides the buyer with the service through representatives of the third country.
Trade in services is currently one of the fastest growing sectors of the global economy, and the following are the reasons for the growth. The degree of mobility of both producers and consumers of services increases due to lower transport costs; the emergence of new forms and means of satellite communications make it possible to completely refuse direct personal contact between the buying and selling parties; the demand for services that previously had a commodity form increased: this applies to financial services, services of banks and insurance companies.