The Arab region still suffers from a lack of detailed information on the statistics on international trade in services due to the insufficiency of regularly conducted surveys and absence of adequate methods to collect, compile and update already existing information.
At the request from Syrian officials, and as a recommendation of ESCWA mission to Syria during 26-29 January 2009, ESCWA in cooperation with the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBStats) of Syria will conduct a national workshop on statistics on International trade in services (SITS) in the in Damascus.
Currently, SITS in Syria is partially collected and compiled by CBS through the Balance of Payment Statistics. Besides, the CBStats collects data on certain components of SITS such as tourism, foreign direct investment in Syria and compiles trade data from costumes records. Despite collecting data on foreign direct investment during 2004, 2005 and 2006, CBStats has not been able to publish the results of the surveys because of the poor quality of collected data.
The workshop will include presentations form the Oman experience in tourist survey and Foreign Trade investment. It is worth to mention that the suggested workshop will be the first national training workshop in SITS. Experiences and lessons learned will be transfer to the rest of ESCWA countries in this regard.