The OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI)
Launched by the OECD in 2014, the OECD STRI is a tool that seeks to quantify, in a comparative manner, measures that affect international trade in services. Its current version includes all of the organization's full members (37 countries), as well as Brazil, China, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Peru, Russia, South Africa and Thailand. These countries represent more than 80% of global trade in services.
The OECD Secretariat and member country experts have selected 22 services sectors and produced their respective lists of measures that restrict sectoral trade. These measures have been grouped into five areas: restrictions on market entry conditions, restrictions on the movement of people, other discriminatory measures, barriers to competition, and regulatory transparency.
The examined services sectors are: audiovisual (television broadcasting, production and distribution of motion pictures and videotapes, sound recording), computer, construction, courier, distribution, financial (banking and insurance), professional services (accounting, architecture, engineering, and legal), telecommunications, transportation (air, maritime, road freight, rail freight), logistics (storage and warehousing, customs brokerage, freight forwarding, cargo-handling).
The most recent STRI report on Brazil highlights three sectors in which the country has a lower score (less trade restrictive) than the average of the countries included in the index: air transport, rail freight and legal services. At the other extreme, the commercial banking, audiovisual and courier sectors received higher scores (more restrictive).
The benefits of the STRI are reflected in the transparency resulting from the broad database on the legislation in force in these 22 sectors of the 48 participating countries and in the indicators of the degree of openness of a country to trade in services. They can constitute a reference for the revision of the normative and regulatory framework of services, in order to make it more open and efficient. In light of this, the Brazilian government has reiterated to the OECD Secretariat its permanent interest in broadening its participation in the review of the methodological aspects of the STRI, aiming at progressively improving the index. By strengthening the contact between policy makers and national regulators, on one hand, and the OECD Secretariat, on the other, Brazil has also been working to improve the country's score by updating and clarifying Brazilian measures that are present in the index database.