V - ASEAN Trade in Services with the Netherlands

Summary

Analysing trade in services between ASEAN countries and the Netherlands is affected by a number of shortcomings which impede the compatibility of results with those gained for West Germany and France.

First, there is a problem of disclosure. The Dutch Central Bank when releasing data on bilateral trade flows between ASEAN countries and the Netherlands for the purpose of this study asked for confidentiality. The author has tried to abide by this request by publishing only aggregate information for ASEAN exports and imports in total (Tables A25 and A26) so that the absolute figures for individual ASEAN countries remain anonymous. In addition, the shares of individual service sectors in total service exports and imports of ASEAN countries are displayed (Table A27).

Second, the aggregation level is very high. The Dutch Central Bank keeps records on four service sectors only. Another problem is that, due to the Dutch accounting framework, payments and receipts in the transport sector are sometimes netted so that negative figures for exports can appear. This turned out to be the case mainly with Malaysian exports, with the result that these figures could not be interpreted.

Thirdly, merchandise and service trade had to be compiled from two different sources as the Central Bank released service data only. While this may bias the share of services in total trade and may therefore impede a comparative view on service shares in trade of the three EC members with ASEAN countries, the comparison between ASEAN countries' trade performance in the Dutch market is not affected.

Bearing these qualifications in mind, the following observations can be made.

First, ASEAN countries in total had a deficit in trade with non-factor services with the Netherlands during the late seventies and the eighties while they shared a clear surplus in merchandise trade (Tables A25 and A26). However, the trend clearly points towards reducing the deficit in trade with services as receipts from Dutch residents rose much faster than payments to them.