China's February service trade deficit narrows

China's deficit in foreign service trade narrowed in February, official data showed Thursday.

The deficit decreased to 20.6 billion U.S. dollars last month, down from 22.8 billion U.S.dollars in January, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement.

Income from trade in services stood at 15.8 U.S. billion U.S.dollars last month, while expenditure was 36.4 billion U.S.dollars.

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

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

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

Last month, China saw a surplus of 8.5 billion U.S. dollars in foreign merchandise trade, down from 46 billion U.S. dollars this January.

(CGTN)