23RD MEETING OF THE VOORBURG GROUP SEPTEMBER 22-26, 2008 AGUASCALIENTES, MÉXICO 23RD MEETING OF THE VOORBURG GROUP SEPTEMBER 22-26, 2008 AGUASCALIENTES, MÉXICO IMPROVING SERVICE TRADE STATISTICS AND STRENGTHENING TRADE PROMOTION

PROMÉXICO Is the Mexican Government agency in charge of promoting mexican exports of good and services and attracting foreign direct investment Has a network of 32 foreign offices that facilitate the contact of mexican firms with foreign investors and importers ProMéxico offers a wide range of services to Mexican firms to develop a competitive export supply, take advantage of the benefits offered by commercial treaties and build better commercialization mechanisms Foreign companies interested in doing business with Mexico receive assistance to find local contacts for purchasing Mexican products and to fulfill their requirements for investing in our country.

TASK FORCE TO IMPROVE MEXICAN SERVICE TRADE STATISTICS The Mexican service industry represents 70% of GDP and contributes with 63% of total employment. However, its share in international trade flows has grown at a slow pace. With the exception of tourism, transportation, and telecomunications, the service industry has not take advantage of its high export potencial, particularly in IT services and BPO´s in different fields This high export potential comes from several advantages, among them its increasing competitive and trained labor force, high quality infrastructure in telecomunications and IT, cultural similarities and proximity with some of its main trading partners Despite these advantages, opportunities for mexican firms to increase exports are constrained among others by the limited service trade information and the lack of a specific service export promotion strategy. To increase mexican exports, government agencies and the service industry alike face several challenges, including the need to improve service trade statistics and strengthen export promotion

TASK FORCE TO IMPROVE MEXICAN SERVICE TRADE STATISTICS At the end of last year ProMéxico established a task force aim at improving trade statistics in order to have a better understanding of the contribution of the service industry in the economy, to assess the impact of service trade negociations and to evaluate service export promotion strategies Members of the task force are the institutions responsible of collecting and producing service trade statistics such as Banco de México (the Central Bank), INEGI (The Statistics National Institute) and The Ministry of the Economy, as well as the main entities that need the information to make policy choices: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Economy and PROMÉXICO The regional offices of the ITC/UNCTAD/WTO and the ECALC in México also participate The task force has preliminary identified the reasons that limit the collection of service trade statistics, the available sources of information that need to be improved and some of the mechanisms that could be implemented

SEMINAR MEASURING AND PROMOTING SERVICES TRADE The seminar hosted by PROMÉXICO will be held from october 29 to 31 in Mexico City at the Business and Training Center in International Trade (CENCACI) The objective of the seminar is to share some of the best practices in service trade statistics and in service export promotion with industry representatives, leading firms and mexican oficials Experts from national statistical agencies, trade promotion agencies and international organizations will participate as panellists, among them from Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, Finland, India, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, ECALC, ITC, IDB, OECD, WTO, and the World Bank

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME OUTLINE OF THE SEMINAR Thursday, October 30 8:30-9:00 Registration 9:00-9:30 Opening Ceremony Importance of improving service trade statistics and strengthening trade promotion 9:30-11:30 First Plenary Session Recent trends and perspectives in international services trade. -What has been the participation of developing countries and what is expected for the near future? -How telecommunications and information technologies make services more tradeable across borders? - What are the economic benefits of service exports? For the economy as a whole? For firms? 12:00-14:00 Second Plenary Session Main challenges to improve services trade statistics. Where to start? -What are the main reasons to improve service trade statistics? -What are the main recommendations to improve services trade statistics? - How governments and firms can benefit from service trade statistics?

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME OUTLINE OF THE SEMINAR 15:30-17:30 Parallel Session 1 Tracking BPO’s trade. Main challenges. -What are the main problems in measuring these type of services? -How have they been solved? -How useful are surveys to collect information from service industries? 15:30-17:30 Parallel Session 2 Service export promotion strategy. General or specific? -What are the advantages of a specific service export promotion strategy? -What are the main components of a specific export promotion strategy? -What should be the balance between supply side measures and international promotion? Friday, October 31 9:30-11:30 Third Plenary Session Service export promotion. -Is it worth it to promote service exports? - What are the main challenges in the promotion of service exports? -Are the instruments to promote service exports different to those to promote goods? -How important is the financing of service exports? What type of financing?

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME OF THE SEMINAR Friday, October 31 (continues) 12:00-14:00 Parallel Session 3 Improving service trade statistics. Definitions and classification. -How useful is to classify services into the four modes of suply? -Where is the frontier between foreign investment flows and services trade? -What is the importance of collecting statistics of foreign affiliates? 12:00-14:00 Parallel Session 4 IT and BPO’s export opportunities. -What are the recent trends and perspectives of BPO’s and IT exports? -What is the relationship between BPO’s and goods exports? -How important is branding to position a country as reliable supplier of BPO’s? 15:30-17:30 Parallel Session 5 Improvinig service trade statistics. Round table with panellists 15:30-17:30 Parallel Session 6 Services Trade Promotion. Round table with panellists 17:30-18:00 Closing Address