China's service trade deficit slightly narrows in March

BEIJING - China's service trade deficit slightly narrowed in March, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) showed Friday.

The deficit stood at $26.2 billion last month, down from $27.3 billion in February, the SAFE data showed.

Income from trade in services was $20.4 billion, while expenditures totaled $46.6 billion.

In contrast to merchandise trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transportation, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing, and accounting.

China has taken steps to improve trade in services, including gradually opening up the finance, education, culture and medical sectors.

SAFE began issuing monthly data on service trade in January 2014 to improve the transparency of balance of payments statistics. Since the start of 2015, it has also included monthly data on merchandise trade in its reports.

Last month, China saw a deficit of $6.3 billion in merchandise trade, the SAFE data showed.