Services Trade Restrictiveness Index
To harness the benefits of open services markets, policy makers need to identify regulatory bottlenecks and understand how these impact on trade and economic performance. The OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) is a unique tool that offers an overview of regulatory barriers across 22 major sectors and 51 countries. Updated annually, the STRI also monitors recent regulatory trends, facilitates benchmarking of services policies against global best practices, and enables analysis of the impact of reform options.
Key messages
Governments are working to address some of the regulatory challenges that inhibit services trade, including through domestic reforms, plurilateral agreements at the WTO, and services-related provisions in regional trade agreements (RTAs).
However, the OECD STRI reveals that close to two-thirds of all barriers continue to affect market access and national treatment, highlighting that closer international cooperation is needed to advance negotiations on further opening up services markets. Moreover, behind-the-border barriers affecting licensing, competition and regulatory transparency continue to be significant as well.
The Reference Paper on Services Domestic Regulations concluded as part of a plurilateral initiative at the WTO in 2021 was a milestone in addressing regulatory gaps and differences. Joint OECD-WTO research has demonstrated that the full implementation of the disciplines on services domestic regulations could bring about annual trade cost savings in the range of USD 150 billion, with one-third of these benefits in financial services and the rest in business, communications, and transport services. The new disciplines on services domestic regulation entered into force during the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference in February 2024.
Differences in how economies regulate the provision of the same service create additional costs for exporters that need to adapt to new sets of rules in each new market. Regulatory co-operation has taken centre stage in trade and investment negotiations, but regulatory convergence in practice remains a challenge. Good examples exist, however, as shown by the STRI tools for the European Economic Area (intra-EEA STRI), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN STRI), and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC Services Index).
The costs of regulatory fragmentation are high, with an average degree of regulatory difference imposing trade costs in the range of 20% to 80%. This means there is an opportunity to lower trade costs for services exporters by promoting more regulatory convergence, including through the adoption of common standards or expanding the recognition of foreign qualifications. Moreover, lifting existing restrictions where they are high should come first. Harmonising the rules of the game brings by far the largest gains when the countries undertaking regulatory co-operation have already brought down their trade barriers.
Context
STRI 2024 at a glance
Services trade plays a critical role in the global economy and can deliver the most benefits when the right policies are in place. At the OECD, we’ve been measuring restrictions to services trade for over a decade. In the latest update, OECD STRI data shows that barriers to trade in services remain high and, in some countries, continue to increase over time.
STRI across countries
The annual update of the STRI database shows that the volume of services trade barriers has grown over the years, although with differences across countries and regions.
In 2024, Japan, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands were top ranked performers with the lowest average regulatory barriers to services trade. Portugal, Greece and India were the countries with the highest degree of liberalising reform.
The 2024 STRI also highlighted differences between OECD and non-OECD countries, with the average level of restriction in non-OECD countries being on average 1.5 times higher than in OECD countries. This indicates the need for continued regulatory co-operation to overcome fragmentation and uneven market conditions. At the same time, several non-OECD economies, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, have been progressively easing barriers on services trade in recent years.
Sector comparisons
The 2024 STRI shows that barriers to services trade continue to be high across countries and sectors, influenced by global economic and geopolitical challenges. On average, air transport, legal and accounting and auditing services are the most restrictive sectors. Distribution services, sound recording, and motion pictures services are the most open sectors.
The figure shows the changes in the STRI index across sectors, where decreases in the index values indicate trade liberalisation and increases show trade restrictive changes.
Across all services sectors, the pace and magnitude of reforms were moderate in 2024 compared to 2023. This suggests a slowdown in global efforts to ease regulatory hurdles for services trade. Increases in levels of restrictiveness are identified in all 22 services sectors covered. Examples of meaningful trade liberalisation are concentrated in just a handful of sectors, including postal services and some professional services.
Country notes
The country notes are short summaries of the STRI results for each country. The country notes were last updated in February 2025.
Sector notes
The sector notes briefly summarize the STRI results for each sector. They were updated in February 2025.
Sector papers
The following OECD Trade Policy papers provide details on the methodology for each sector.
Tools
Regulatory database: The online STRI regulatory database displays the detailed information used to develop the index, along with sources and comments for all countries and sectors. This qualitative database also provides the source of the regulation, along with the title of the law, relevant articles, a web link to the law, and a comment if additional explanations are required.
Policy Simulator: The STRI Policy Simulator allows policy makers and experts to explore the impact of a change at a detailed level for each measure, and to compare a specific country with a range of other selected countries in a particular sector.
STRI Explorer: The STRI Explorer is an interactive web tool that allows users to investigate the STRI database and indices in a flexible manner. It allows users to compare the services trade restrictiveness of different countries, sectors, years, or policy areas, or to examine a specific case in more detail. The resulting downloadable graphs and tables can be used to analyse trends and patterns in services trade policy.
Digital Services Trade Restrictiveness Index
Methodology
The STRI scoring methodology uses binary scores. Most measures in the STRI regulatory database have binary answers (yes/no) and binary scores are applied directly. Measures that have numerical answers are broken down to thresholds to which binary scores are applied.
Some measures constitute hierarchies where one or a combination of a few measures would close a market segment or a mode of supply to foreign suppliers. In other cases, a restriction on one measure would render others irrelevant. The scoring methodology captures such hierarchies by conditioning the scoring on measures on the answers to questions higher up in the hierarchy of measures.
Some measures are complementary. These are bundled together in the scoring methodology such that if one measure in the bundle is scored as a restriction, then all of them are.
The methodology note explains the thresholds, hierarchies, and bundling of measures. It starts with the horizontal measures that are included in all sectors, followed by sector-specific scoring methodologies.
- Paper on STRI Scoring and Weighting Methodology (January 2015)
- Methodology note (May 2014)
- All indices
