China News Service, May 7 According to the website of the Ministry of Commerce, on May 7, the person in charge of the Service Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce introduced the overall situation of my country's service trade from January to March 2021.

The person in charge pointed out that in the first quarter of this year, the total value of my country's service trade import and export value was 115.819 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), an increase of 0.5% year-on-year; of which service exports were 545.75 billion yuan, an increase of 22.8%; imports were 612.44 billion yuan, a decrease of 13.5%.

The growth rate of service exports exceeded that of imports by 36.3 percentage points, driving the service trade deficit to drop by 74.7% to 66.69 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 197.05 billion yuan.

　　Compared with the same period in 2019, the import and export of services fell by 10.4%, of which exports increased by 17.7%; imports fell by 26.1%.

Mainly present the following characteristics:

　　In March, the growth rate of service imports and exports turned positive for the first time since the epidemic.

In March, my country's total service imports and exports amounted to 444.12 billion yuan, an increase of 7.9%, marking the first monthly increase since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia. Among them, exports were 210.36 billion yuan, an increase of 24.3%; imports were 233.76 billion yuan, a decrease of 3.6%.

The three fastest-growing areas are transportation services, personal cultural and entertainment services, and intellectual property royalties, with increases of 56.2%, 34.5%, and 33.6% respectively.

　　The proportion of knowledge-intensive service trade increased.

In the first quarter, my country's knowledge-intensive service imports and exports amounted to 539.5 billion yuan, an increase of 15.5%, accounting for 46.6% of the total service imports and exports, an increase of 6.1 percentage points.

Among them, the export of knowledge-intensive services was 301.03 billion yuan, an increase of 14.7%, accounting for 55.2% of the total service exports; the areas with faster growth in exports were personal culture and entertainment services, financial services, telecommunications, computers and information services, which increased by 37.6%, respectively. 29.8%, 28.2%.

Imports of knowledge-intensive services amounted to 238.47 billion yuan, an increase of 16.6%, accounting for 38.9% of the total service imports; the fastest growing area of ​​imports was financial services, which increased by 45.2%.

　　The import and export of travel services continued to decline.

At present, countries continue to adopt strict measures to restrict the movement of people across borders, and the impact of the epidemic on the import and export of travel services continues.

In the first quarter, my country's import and export of travel services was 191.47 billion yuan, down 45.9%, of which exports fell by 46.1% and imports fell by 45.9%.

Excluding travel services, my country's service imports and exports increased by 21.1% in the first quarter, of which exports increased by 28.2% and imports increased by 13.6%.