OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index 2026

OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index 2026: Policy Trends

In 2025, global services markets continued to evolve amid technological acceleration and volatile geopolitical dynamics. Countries responded to the shifting global trade landscape by a mix of services trade policy adjustments, some opening new opportunities for foreign suppliers, others tightening existing frameworks. The 2026 edition of the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) provides an overview of the latest developments in services trade policy, tracking policy changes that were made public up to 31 October 2025 and highlighting emerging trends affecting competitiveness, market openness and the evolving digital services landscape. By monitoring the regulatory landscape for trade in services across countries and over time, the STRI informs the decisions of policymakers and regulators, conveys transparent and accessible information for exporters, and provides a source of data for academic research on the drivers and impediments to trade in services.

Key messages

• Barriers to services trade remained high in 2025. New restrictions outweighed the effect of liberalisation. The pace of reform slowed, indicating a stagnation of services policy modernisation amidst manufacturing-focused trade tensions.

• Stagnation in services trade reform compromises potential competitiveness and productivity gains. The digital transformation and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom foreshadow a surge in cross-border commercial activity in services. Current regulatory frameworks, many of which were designed in the 1990s, are ill-equipped for these advances, as technological change increasingly outpaces policy development. The absence of significant strategic modernisation risks aggravating the digital divide. Economies that fail to update their services regimes risk missing out on the productivity gains and value-added growth that AI is expected to deliver via enhanced services.

• A forward-looking, technology-ready regulatory landscape for trade in services is essential to unlock the benefits of AI and sustain inclusive global growth. Countries should accelerate reforms, including full implementation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Joint Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation disciplines, operationalisation of the WTO Joint Statement Initiative on E-commerce, and making the WTO e-commerce Moratorium permanent. The STRI demonstrates that progress has been made in the implementation of the Services Domestic Regulation disciplines since 2021, but important scope for further reform remains.

• New restrictions in 2025 include foreign investment screening mechanisms and sector-specific policies affecting physical infrastructure and audiovisual services. Liberalising changes were mainly due to reforms in financial services, and logistics and related services.

• The gap in the degree of services trade restrictiveness between OECD and non-OECD countries continues to narrow, but significant differences remain in regional outcomes. Addressing these persistent asymmetries should be a priority in the context of action to reduce global imbalances.

• Substantial disparities in openness also plague digital trade. Although barriers have eased in Africa and the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific have seen an increase in regulatory barriers over the past decade. African countries, for example, maintain regulations that are, on average, three times more restrictive than those in OECD economies. Effective regulation in digital trade requires not only openness, but also robust frameworks that foster trust in digital services.

• Japan, the Netherlands and Spain were the top performers in 2025, displaying the most overall openness in their services sectors. The United Kingdom, Latvia, Czechia, Germany, Portugal, Chile and Lithuania round out the top ten.

• New Zealand, Indonesia and India were the leading reformers in 2025. New Zealand facilitated business travel by speeding up the processing of visa applications, while Indonesia removed caps on private ownership in state-owned enterprises in many services sectors. India eased barriers to foreign entry in insurance by lifting the remaining foreign equity restrictions.

• Further easing barriers to trade in services could unlock important trade cost savings, boost productivity, and reduce emissions in downstream manufacturing industries that use services as inputs. Comprehensive reforms addressing both economy-wide and sector-specific barriers could reduce annual global trade costs by approximately USD 1.6 trillion. At the sectoral level, financial services, for instance, would benefit from significant trade cost savings (-29% in commercial banking and -16% in insurance) if countries were to reduce their STRIs halfway toward the best performer.