[Video message]
Distinguished experts, colleagues, good morning.
Welcome to the 12th session of our multi-year expert meeting on trade services and development.
The topic before you, servicification for economic diversification, may sound technical, but it is deeply practical. It is about what happens when a farmer uses a mobile payment app to sell produce across borders. When a manufacturer embeds software into a product to compete in a new market. When a logistics company goes digital, and suddenly its hinterland becomes global.
Services now make up 71% of all intermediate inputs worldwide. They account for 27% of global trade and are growing at more than twice the pace of goods.
Digitally deliverable services exports alone grew over 7% a year over the past decade.
These are powerful forces. They are also uneven ones.
In developed economies, 61% of services exports are delivered digitally. In the least developed countries, the figure is 16%.
Closing that gap is the central challenge of this meeting. Your mandate from the Geneva Consensus is clear. Improve services trade data and help countries design services-led strategies for their diversification.
Over the next two days, I encourage you to be concrete. Share what has worked. Identify what has not and focus especially on the data gaps that still hold policymakers back.
I wish you a productive session.
I thank you.