Measuring the Regulatory Environment for Services Trade in the ASEAN Region

Services play an important role in fostering economic growth in the ASEAN region, contributing close to half of the region’s GDP on average. Services trade support greater regional integration, innovation and job creation, help attract more foreign investment and improve regional capacity to respond to global challenges.

Impediments to services trade, however, could undermine the benefits of open services markets. Therefore, comparable and reliable information on services regulations is key to inform policy discussions on reforms, identify best practices to incentivize better and cheaper services, foster regulatory transparency and boosts competitiveness throughout the region.

In 2019, the ASEAN Coordinating Committee on Services (CCS), in collaboration with the OECD, commenced work to improve existing measurement of services trade regulations through developing the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) for ASEAN Member States (AMS) in four priority sectors: logistics services, telecommunications services, construction and computer services. In March 2022, the ASEAN STRI was completed for all AMS in these four services sectors. Further work is currently underway to expand the sectoral coverage to other services relevant for the region.

The ASEAN STRI is a unique tool that can help AMS and policy makers make better choices to drive economic recovery and empower a services-led growth model in the ASEAN region. This webpage facilitates use of the ASEAN STRI by providing:

  • Access to the ASEAN STRI Policy Simulator – an interactive tool to view outcomes and simulate impact of possible policy reforms (hyperlink to Policy Simulator)
  • Access the ASEAN STRI data;
  • Summary report for the four sectors 

Explore the data

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More information on services trade

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For further information, please contact stri.contact@oecd.org.

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